Convention center billed $238K for gas in February
The Hot Springs Convention Center received a $238,450.96 gas bill for February on Friday, over one month after record cold temperatures gripped the region, as the result of using an independent gas supplier.
The bill, which is over 2,000% more than what the center usually pays for one month, came as a complete surprise to Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison, and when he called their gas supplier, Symmetry Energy Solutions, he was more surprised to learn the amount issued was correct.
“Due to the terrible weather in Texas and other places where they get their natural gas; the valves froze and all these types of things, and they couldn’t generate the power to pump the natural gas,” Arrison said. “Therefore they had to reach out and find natural gas to ship down to us and our convention center, so they just paid whatever it cost.”
“It’s very disturbing to me,” he said. “Right now … I’m writing a formal complaint to the Arkansas Public Service Commission because that’s not our fault. … We’re not paying this bill. I do not plan on paying this bill. I know it was very cold, so we did expect a bill larger than normal, but over 2,000%? There’s just no way. It’s insane.”
Donna Gray, executive director of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, said the commission only has jurisdiction over nontransportation customers in gas utilities, like residential or small commercial customers, and the convention center has elected to be a transportation customer and independently work with their gas
supplier of choice.
What the commission has done to help combat “rate shock” for the nontransportation customers, Gray said, is to ask companies to spread out the additional cost caused by February’s inclement weather. The increase should be “significantly mitigated” in gas bills for the months to come. The commission is also launching an investigation to ensure no additional charges outside of what was necessary during the winter storm are being made.
Since the convention center has elected to be a transportation customer and work independently with Symmetry Energy Solutions, Gray said the dispute is between them and the company they purchase gas from.
“That’s more than we spend in a whole year on natural gas, but the bill for $238,450.96, you know our largest gas bill since 2018 was in January of 2019, which was $18,294,” Arrison said.
“This could have been controlled by the natural gas industry, and they didn’t control it. …
This is over a 2,000% increase. There’s no fairness to that, so we’re going to appeal to the Arkansas Public Service Commission, we’re going to copy our state and national legislators, because it’s not right,” he said.
“The providers of natural gas should have taken measures to make sure this didn’t happen,” he said. “They should have been doing that over the years; it’s not my fault they couldn’t produce it.”
“I don’t see it’s fair that they just pass on all their cost to us,” he said.