PUC Grants Gas Company Two More Rate Increases : Energy: Combined with an earlier rise, residential customers could see their monthly bills go up 13%.

The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday granted Southern California Gas Co. two rate increases that, together with a hike approved last month, will boost the average residential customer’s monthly gas bill as much as 13%.

The gas company said that for the typical customer--whose monthly usage averages out to 53 therms a month--bills after the first of the year will go up to $33.79. That compares with $29.90 just two months ago.

The increases approved Thursday take effect Jan. 1 and total $166 million. On Nov. 21, the commission approved a separate $66-million increase that took effect at the beginning of this month.

Coming in the midst of record low temperatures, when natural-gas usage has climbed to record highs, the rate increases could be a severe shock to residential customers.

Ironically, according to both the gas company and the PUC, one of Thursday’s rate increases was granted in part because the weather had been so mild for most of this year. That hike, of $72 million, is intended to make up for a shortfall in gas company revenues this year resulting from lower customer use and higher-than-expected costs of gas.

The biggest share of that increase--$52 million--will be borne by residential customers under a program approved by the commission last year to gradually eliminate subsidies of residential rates by the utility’s larger commercial and industrial customers.

The second rate increase granted Thursday was for $94 million, to cover increased operating costs and capital expenditures.

Consumer groups are concerned that average residential customers will be hard-pressed, come January, to pay utility bills. The commission last week granted Southern California Edison Co. a 9.3% increase in residential electric rates effective Jan. 1, and earlier this year approved rate hikes for telephone services as well.

“This will definitely cause hardships,” said Audrie Krause, executive director of Toward Utility Rate Normalization, a San Francisco-based activist group.

“We’re going into a recession. Some people don’t even have jobs,” Krause said. “Having energy bills go up substantially the first of the year will be a hardship, especially for people on fixed incomes whose cost-of-living adjustments are only about 4%.”

The commission granted the rate increases without calculating the effect, in dollars, on the typical residential customer. While the PUC said the latest increase would mean a 6% rise in the average residential bill, the gas company’s figures indicate that the increase is actually closer to 8%.

Krause blasted the commission for not having calculated the dollar impact and called the latest round of hikes “obscene.” She said the commission was in a hurry to dispense with utility rate-increase requests before the end of the year, when the terms of two of its five members expire.

Kyle DeVine, a PUC spokeswoman, said that although the commission usually has such figures in hand before it decides on rate increase requests, it is not required to have them. The rate increases cannot take effect until the gas company submits them to the commission, she added.

DeVine said the mandatory 30-day notice period for the rate request was observed. “This was not rushed,” she said.