PROTEST • San Diego has nation’s highest prices this year
dential customers climbing 7.8 percent and the average price per therm for customers with natural gas hookups rising 24.6 percent compared with the previous year.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the San Diego region had the highest average energy price in the country in January through April.
SDG&E has long charged higher rates than the two other big investorowned utilities in California — Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison — and has cited a number of reasons why, including:
• having fewer commercial and industrial sectors than PG&E and Edison, who make up a larger share of the energy load than residential customers.
• having about 60 percent of its circuits and wires below ground, which are more expensive. The national industry average is about 40 percent.
Sempra has become a major player in the liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export market.
Its $10 billion Cameron LNG facility opened in 2019 on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, sending cargoes to clients around the world. The company is in the process of building an export facility near Ensenada in Baja California and has plans to build two more — another in Mexico and one in Port Arthur, Texas.
LNG has taken on a higher profile in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia is Europe’s largest single supplier of natural gas, and LNG exporters have stepped up shipments to Europe in recent months to help displace Russian gas. President Joe Biden on March 27 committed the U.S. liquefied natural gas industry to supply an additional 15 billion cubic tons of LNG to Europe through the remainder of 2022.
Export facilities take natural gas via pipeline, cool it to minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit, and load the liquefied product onto specially made cargo tanks on double-hulled ships that take the LNG to markets around the world.
Since natural gas burns about twice as clean as coal, supporters of LNG say it’s an effective and environmentally friendlier option. But environmental groups oppose exporting LNG, saying it extends the use of fossil fuels and threatens the goal set by the 2015 Paris Climate Treaty to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100.