What Have Been the Effects of Restructuring on Information on the Price of Natural Gas?
Data on the price of natural gas from utilities and nonutilities turned out to be difficult to obtain in the 1994 MECS. However, the overall average price paid by manufacturers is still of value, considering that EIA’s supplier survey also lacks data on prices. As mentioned earlier, natural gas suppliers may either sell or merely transport the gas that they deliver to industrial customers. Suppliers have pricing information only for the onsystem portion of their deliveries, that is, the gas that they actually sell to the end user. The average onsystem industrial price for natural gas in 1994 was $3.05 per thousand cubic feet, yet this price applies to only 26 percent of all the natural gas delivered to industrial customers, leaving the average price of the other 74 percent unknown (Figure 4.6). EIA analysts think that because lower prices are often the motivating factor for an industrial customer to go offsystem, the average price for all industrial natural gas is likely to be lower th
