Rock valley, Iowa: Birthplace of retail gas competition
✍ Scribed by Smith, William H.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Weight
- 321 KB
- Volume
- 12
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0743-5665
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
S ity phase of an interesting experiment in retail competition for small customers. Midwest Gas, now a division of Mid American Energy Company since the recent merger of Midwest Resources and Iowa-Illinois Gas 8r Electric, has invited three gas marketers to compete with it to supply gas to its customers in a small Iowa town. The three marketers selected are Equitable Gas Co., of Pittsburgh; Minnegasco, of Minneapolis; and Energy One, of Columbus, Ohio.
After a month of public education during September, customers in Rock Valley, population 2,450, will be able to ballot during October for their natural gas supplier for service beginning November 1. The experiment will run for a calendar year.
Little Initial Interest
Iowa regulators recognized the probable value of retail competition in natural gas as early as 1985436 and developed open transportation rules. Larger customers made extensive use of these rules and have been buying gas from competitive suppliers, including the state's utili- ties, since then. Utilities have responded by bringing their commodity prices into line with the market, and small customers have benefited from that alignment.
Although the rules and tariffs set no minimum size for transportation customers, the small customer market has attracted no rush of marketers. To paraphrase Field of Dreams, we built it and nobody came.