BANGOR, Maine — After initially starting with barely a whiff of customers, Bangor Gas Co. these days needs the equivalent of a high-pressure line to handle the influx of people converting to natural gas.
“We’ve almost quadrupled the number of our customers in four years,” said Jonathan Kunz, manager of marketing and sales for Bangor Gas. “Over one thousand new customers converted or are converting during this 2012 construction season, which is now full for this season.”
Due to the large volume of requests for service, Bangor Gas is already accepting applications for 2013.
Getting swamped by requests for gas line connections was a pipe dream for Bangor Gas officials 12 years ago, when gas first started pumping through lines being built by the then-two-year-old company.
“We started in 1998 and it was very slow growth up until around 2007,” said Kunz. “A hundred to two hundred customers a year was typical to that point. But in early 2008, the same time we were sold by Sempra to Energy West, things really started taking off.”
Kunz said at that point, two major developments occurred: The price gulf between gas and oil began expanding massively, and customers started believing that Bangor Gas was here to stay.
“That year we did over 500 customers. When price didn’t change and started affecting more people, we went to 1,000 customers a year on average from 2010 to the present day,” he explained.
Kunz and Jerry Livengood, Bangor Gas general manager, said their 1,000-customer-per-year goal has been easily reachable, and they don’t expect that will change next year. They also said they annually use up all of their capital budget dedicated to costs associated with building and expanding their network of gas lines from Bangor to Old Town. The company also has two major customers in Bucksport, one being the Verso Paper mill, but has not begun providing service for private customers yet.
Brewer leads the way with 30 to 40 percent of its potential customers having access to natural gas lines. Old Town is next at about 30 percent, and Bangor follows at around 25, according to Livengood.
Still, heating oil customers in Maine still make up 70 percent of the market.
That doesn’t deflate Kunz’s optimism at all.
“Optimistically, the number of oil consumers in Maine will drop below 50 percent, and I definitely think it’s possible,” he said.
Another early problem for Bangor Gas — repair of ground and pavement dug up during line installation on city and neighborhood streets, sidewalks and lawns — is much less of a problem now.
Earlier this year, the Bangor City Council temporarily suspended the issuance of permits for Bangor Gas to install lines due to complaints from residents about the lack of cleanup done after lines were installed.
“The contractor who was hired to do that work went out of business and we weren’t notified, so it fell behind a few weeks between installation and repairing pavement,” Kunz said. “Gardner Construction came on to take that over and once that happened, we’ve had no complaints. They came on board right after the council put a hold on our permits and we haven’t had any trouble since.”
The company’s gas line construction season runs roughly from April through Thanksgiving, weather permitting. The company can now install more line in a shorter time than it used to with a much bigger workforce and collection of equipment.
“It’s definitely much easier to install lines now than we did in 1999, with two drill crews of our own along with having our own excavating crews and equipment like excavators, dump trucks and borers to keep up with growth.”
Even with all its expanded company resources, Bangor Gas is still using just as many contractors as it had been when it had virtually no company equipment.
“Growth came with so much change from the previous years that we were slow to keep up with demand and there was basically a traffic jam,” Kunz said. “Now we’re ahead of the game.”
Nice ad.
I have natural gas for heating and hot water, my largest monthly bill ever was $142.00 I can live with that.
I asked them when they were coming out to outer Ohio street, and they said right now they have no plans to expand in that area.
They told me the same thing about South Brewer. I was really surprised considering the number of potential customers in the Sherwood Forest area.
If this had been a government-stimulus project, everyone in the entire region would have received gas hook up, and a large number of good jobs would have been created.
Private industry doesn’t care about equality or fairness. Our Constitution does.
And then, 10 years from now, after the natural gas supply glut has come and gone because the fracking boom wasn’t sustainable, we could all sit around and blame government for getting us hooked on “cheap” natural gas when we should have been super insulating, and converting to biomass heat and/or new generation heat pumps, as well as blaming the government for spending a fortune on distribution pipes to the farthest-flung customers on the very outskirts of towns, pipes then rendered useless as the gas supply went the same way as the oil did.
By the way, government doesn’t care about the Constitution anymore than industry does because if government did care the President wouldn’t have signed on to the indefinite hold policy via the NDAA like he did last winter (along with a whole other laundry list of things done by government that is slowly tearing up the Constitution.)
Perhaps you should ask your buddy Obama why it was not a Govt. stimulus project.
Your probably right, but someone has to pay the final bill. I wonder if they are receiving tax right offs, because they provide an alternate energy?
Bangor Gas has a great product but offers the worst service you will find anywhere. They make promises that are not kept and ignore the requests of many to consider their neighborhood. They could triple their numbers overnight if they had the right leadership. The parent company is making money, the local guys are a bunch of clowns.
If this had been a government stimulus project, a lot of jobs would have been created, and everyone in the region, not just a select group, would have been able to get gas.
Private industry only cares about profit, not people.
Only profit? I am glad you said that because that my friend is why the methadone clinics are in Bangor…for profit! They are for profit and care about their profits and keeping junkies hooked on the junk for their personal P&L and balance sheet. They could care less how many lives directly or indirectly are destroyed for their gain. They make Bain Capital look like heros.
Regarding stimulus, I would rather deal with a business with poor customer service then one that picks my pocket and runs wild with taxpayer fat and waste. How many jobs did SOLARA create with our childrens money? BGR GAS just need a boss that can drive home the fact that if they don’t clean up their act and improve their skills then someone else is willing to do their job that will.
BTW, the last I knew, dealing with governement employees was about as fun as the dentist. Wait until Gvmt runs healthcare, the ER will look like a DMV. Yippy! Only those of us with the means to elevate ourselves above the system will be able to get what we pay for and we will.
Go play with your trust fund and let the rest of us deal with the real world.
Ha ha that was funny.
A+, well thought out comment! Lets just federalize everything, because the government always runs things better. I don’t know if you’re trolling or serious. I haven’t laughed so hard since I was on nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office.
Wow, the real, underlying story here is that world oil production has peaked all while China and India are finally starting to take their share of the remaining daily world production. Bangor Gas doesn’t have to worry about oil not giving up ground to natural gas because oil customers will be in full retreat over the next 10 years as heating oil prices climb past $5, 6, or even $8 or 9 a gallon. After that point, prices probably won’t go any higher as there won’t be any heating oil industry left.
That said, people switching to natural gas better hope the natural gas supply boom, thanks to hydraulic fracturing, continues, because there are signs out there that said boom is far from sustainable. Natural gas is going to be loved to death.