"Lost Gas" Costs Pennsylvania Consumers $131 Million

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

July 9, 2012 | 4:15 PM

A chunk of consumers’ home heating bills pay for “lost” gas – natural gas that never makes it to its intended destination. The Tribune-Review has more on the missing natural gas:

Pennsylvania’s natural gas customers are paying up to $131 million a year for gas they never used, the state Public Utility Commission says.
Nationwide, Pennsylvania trails behind only California in the amount of gas lost each year, according to a PUC report.
Consumers are footing the bill for what utilities call “unaccounted for gas” lost through leaking distribution pipes, inaccurate measurements, thefts or billing problems, the report said.
“I don’t think I should be paying for something I didn’t get,” said Mark Wills of Hempfield. “That’s something (companies) should eat themselves.”