Southwest Gas users to get a discount on April bills

Southwest Gas has filed a quarterly rate adjustment that will decrease gas bills starting in April. For Southern Nevada, customers overall gas rates will go down by 10.5 percent, and in Northern Nevada, the overall rates will decrease by 13 percent, according to documents submitted to the Public Utilities Commission.

The impact of this decrease varies depending on the type customer. Here is the impact for Southern Nevada residential customers:

Single-family home customers’ bills should decrease by 9.9 percent, which translates to a reduction of $9.54.

Apartment customers’ bills should decrease by 9.2 percent, which translates to a reduction of $5.04.

Here is the impact for Northern Nevada residential customers:

— Single-family home customers’ bills should decrease by 12.4 percent, which translates to a reduction of $18.27.

— Apartment customers’ bills should decrease by 11.6 percent, which translates to a reduction of $10.03.

This is the third straight quarter that Southwest Gas has reduced its quarterly rates, which cover fuel purchase costs for the utility, according to a Southwest Gas news release. The utility said it expects that it will continue to file quarterly rate decreases throughout 2024 and a reduction of 50 percent could happen in July.

These decreases come after customers expressed shock and outrage over their winter gas bills, including an increase of nearly 50 percent compared to last year for some customers.

Southwest Gas said the recent bills were high due to the cost of natural gas increasing by more than 75 percent over the last two years and although the cost of natural gas has decreased in recent months the company still needed to recoup costs for when gas prices were elevated.

Now that natural gas prices have been decreasing for several months Nevada customers should start to see relief on their monthly bills, Southwest Gas said.

Although Southwest Gas expects that it will continue to decrease its fuel cost rates it doesn’t mean all rates in a customer’s bill will decrease in 2024 as the utility has an application in front of the PUC that seeks to raise its annual rates by $70 million which will be spent on capital projects and long term investments. This application also seeks to increase Southwest Gas’ rate of return or how much it can profit from its Nevada operations.

This application is still being considered by the PUC and a ruling could come this month or in April.

Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.