As of March, 2016, the CRCOG Natural Gas Consortium has continued the hiatus of the program, since market conditions still indicate that utility pricing is better than current NYMEX market pricing. CRCOG staff seeks updates frequently from our contractor, EnerNOC, to make sure that this information is up to date.
The CRCOG Natural Gas Consortium met on Friday, February 7, 2014 to discuss current market conditions and the contract cycle starting July 1, 2014. It was determined at this meeting that given the current NYMEX market conditions vs. the available utility prices, that the group would default to utility for one year (July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015).
This is due to the fact that any third party supplier pricing in the market simply cannot match the current low utility rates in Connecticut. If the Consortium were to stay together and buy from the market, it would be approximately 20-30% higher cost than what is currently being charged by the utility companies.
This is not a decision taken lightly as this group was first formed in 1998, just after Connecticut deregulated its energy commodities. We regret the need to take this one year hiatus, but cannot possibly justify the increased price of buying from the market vs. utility. CRCOG will continue to serve towns in our CRCOG Electricity Consortium and closely monitor the natural gas market for opportunities for re-entry of our group. The plan is to reconvene the Natural Gas Consortium in January 2015 to discuss market conditions and the possibility of a contract that begins July 1, 2015.
Consortium members have been given detailed instructions on next steps. If yo have any questions or would like an update on the status of the Consortium, please contact Jennifer March-Wackers at jwackers@crcog.org or (860) 522-2217 ext. 239.
We truly appreciate your participation and hope to reconvene this group as soon as the market will allow.
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