Pennsylvania Residential Gas Migration Rate Slides in All Areas Except Columbia, PECO

The Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate has posted updated residential natural gas migration statistics as of July 1, 2011.

The OCA's stats can be found here.

A comparison to April's stats as compiled by Matters can be found here

All utilities except Columbia Gas, PECO, and UGI Utilities - Gas Division saw a decrease in the number of migrated residential customers versus April 1, 2011. Most utilities also shed around 1,000 to 4,000 distribution accounts during this same period, although the migration decreases were generally higher than what would have been expected had the distribution churn been spread across competitive and sales customers according to the ratio of migrated to non-migrated accounts.

PECO saw the largest gain in residential migration with growth of 6,900 migrated accounts April 1 to July 1, a nearly four-fold increase from growth in the first quarter. Columbia saw residential migration grow 5,700 accounts during the quarter, up from the growth of 3,400 accounts during the first quarter.

The only other utility seeing residential migration growth during the quarter was UGI-Gas Division, with a net gain of 182 migrated accounts; however, this is only one-tenth of the 1,600 account growth in residential migration that UGI-Gas Division recorded in the first quarter.

Other notable statistics include National Fuel Gas Distribution shedding 550 residential choice accounts during the quarter, reversing the recent trend of migration growth in the territory (+4,600 last quarter). Peoples Natural Gas, which remains the most active territory in terms of overall residential migration, saw the loss of residential choice accounts decrease to 972 for the quarter, versus a loss of 1,600 during the first quarter.

Leading utilities for overall residential migration continue to be Peoples Natural Gas (26% of accounts), Columbia Gas (21%) and National Fuel Gas Distribution (8.3%).