Gas fees opposed

Clare Doll of Cedar City is fed up with skyrocketing natural gas prices, and even more incensed about a proposal that will pass to consumers millions of dollars in natural gas processing costs.

On Thursday, Doll joined 326 other Utahns in filing petitions with the state's Public Service Commission, urging the three-member panel to hear more evidence regarding the 8-year-old gas-processing dispute.

The latest petitions join 385 others filed earlier this month. All of them ask that Roger Ball, the former executive director of the Utah Committee of Consumer Services, and Claire Geddes, a longtime consumer advocate, be granted so-called "intervenor status" in the matter, which would allow Ball and Geddes to be heard on the issue.

"We are all very worried about our gas bills," Doll said. "I would feel a whole lot better if we had some of our representatives heard. All we are trying to do is get our viewpoint across."

Doll has abandoned hope that the state's utility watchdog group — the six-member consumer committee charged with looking after the interests of residential and small-business customers — will make a difference.

In October, the consumer committee joined the Utah Division of Public Utilities and Salt Lake-based Questar Gas Co. in recommending to the Public Service Commission that natural gas processing costs be passed on to consumers. In November, the committee filed a motion opposing the request by Ball and Geddes to be heard on the issue.

The consumer committee, Doll maintains, is not looking out for her interests.

So Doll is putting her trust in Ball and Geddes and their grassroots effort to stop the processing fees, which will amount to nearly $6 million a year passed on to Questar customers for four years, or about $7 a year per customer.

Ball, who was fired in March by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., said his original intention behind the petitions was to come up with a handful of citizens as ammunition, making it more difficult, he said, "for the commission to say, 'Look, this is just Roger Ball and Claire Geddes, the two well-known lunatics.' "

Ball said the response by citizens has been overwhelming.

"It has outstripped anything we ever imagined," Ball said. "It's pretty straightforward. People are angry about their gas bills."

Today, Questar customers are paying nearly 38 percent more for their natural gas than they were last year. Those costs are unrelated to the processing plant.

Jean Klein of Vernal feels that the state's consumer committee has let down Utahns.