Member System Profiles: Jefferson-Cocke County Utility District

They experienced very little growth from their creation in 1956 to provide natural gas service and propane to Jefferson and Cocke Counties, Tennessee, to 1990, when JCCUD served 2566 natural gas customers. Carolyn Ramsey, the Administrative Manager of the district, points out that “1990 was the year Tommy Bible came on board as General Manager.” The 1990’s saw an 8% annual growth rate in the number of customers. Now, in 2005, they serve and sell approximately 2.7 BCF annually to 7,270 natural gas customers, split between 6059 residential, 1158 commercial, and 53 industrial natural gas customers. Their natural gas customer growth has continued at about 1 ½ % annually since the price of natural gas began increasing in 2000. Ms. Ramsey believes the growth –and retention— is largely due to how closely Tommy Bible “keeps in constant contact with our industrial customers, to let them know what we are doing for them.”

Tommy Bible

According to Mr. Bible, “Approximately 75 % of our sales are to large interruptible industrial customers.” As their firm load grew rapidly in the 1990s, their large industrial customers became more and more interruptible since JCCUD operated on a constrained pipeline. To end interruptions to these important industrial customers that are the backbone of their sales, The District formed a purchasing group, United Utilities, with three sister Tennessee utilities across the state: Elk River, Powell-Clinch Utility District, and Sevier County. Mr. Bible says the group “utilized their respective capacities for the benefit of the group, resulting in much fewer interruptions to our industrial customers and increased sales on our system.” For example, the Sevier County system uses most of its gas on the weekends, since it contains the tourist attractions of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Since its industrial customers are closed on weekends, JCCUD sends some of its’ gas to Sevier County to meet their peak. In turn, Sevier County sends some of its gas, which is excess for them during the week, to JCCUD to serve all its customers. This arrangement has helped them all keep prices down, and in JCCUD’s case, has meant losing a single industrial customer since 2000.

Tommy Bible should be proud of the fact that “we have not increased our local distribution mark-up since November 1990, thanks to the United Utilities purchasing group, planning of our Board of Commissioners and the efforts of our employees.” To stabilize prices, JCCUD also utilizes a hedging program, as well as gas storage in salt caverns owned by Virginia Gas in Abington, Virginia..

Since prices began to climb in 2000, we have kept our and customers informed via a quarterly newsletter, which “has served as a valuable way to communicate the happenings in the natural gas market.” When prices first started rising, they invited their customers to write their Congress person, expressing concern about the much higher price of natural gas. They also printed the letter that APGA sent in 2000 to Secretary of Energy, calling attention to the higher prices. Because of this outreach, “Our customers understand that our utility is doing everything we can to keep natural gas prices low for them.”

When asked about their membership in APGA, Mr. Bible responded that they believe the value they receive through representation in Washington “is worth many times the cost of our dues. APGA not only represents our utility, they also are speaking for all of the public gas customers across the country. APGA brings educational value to our employees and is basically the lone voice in trying to communicate the needs of our customers to Congress and FERC.”

Originally in June 27, 2005 Public Gas News