The Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel is recommending the commodity rate SaskEnergy charges customers be decreased from $4.20 per gigajoule to $3.30 and that the 5 per cent increase in delivery rate go ahead for 2023-24 but no further increases take place the year following.

This is in the wake of an April announcement by the then Minister responsible Don Morgan who said the government was directing the Saskatchewan Rate Review Panel to cancel a rate application submitted by SaskEnergy for rate hikes of 5.0 per cent on July 1, 2023 and again on July 1, 2024.

Then at the end of June, SaskEnergy applied to the Rate Review Panel for adjustments to its rates, submitting a proposal for a 22.1 per cent decrease to the commodity rate and a fiver per cent delivery service rate increase on October 1st, which would lower bills by about $5.66 a month for the average residential customer, and that is basically what the Crown Corporation asked for.

The review of SaskEnergy’s proposed 2023 commodity rate application in the spring and its delivery rate financial update was spurred by a commodity rate increase of 31 per cent that went into effect on August 1, 2022 and an 8 per cent increase in delivery rates on the same day. Meanwhile, January 1, 2023, SaskPower bills increased on average by three per cent because the federal carbon tax was increasing from $50 to $65 per tonne. There were also two previous SaskPower rate increases of four per cent each which went into effect September 1, 2022 and April 2023.