Texas Gas Service Offers Advice to Reduce Bills
AUSTIN, TX – January 6, 2010 – As frigid weather settles over Texas for an extended stay, Texas Gas Service, a division of ONEOK Inc. (NYSE: OKE), is forecasting that its customers will use near-record amounts of natural gas in the next few days.
In spite of the cold, customers can reduce the impact of the weather on their bills with some common-sense conservation steps and by taking advantage of a program that spreads the cost of their natural gas service over a 12-month period.
Texas Gas Service projects that its customers will use more than 425 million cubic feet of natural gas during the 24-hour period from Thursday morning (Jan. 7) until Friday morning (Jan. 8), as the state endures the next Arctic air mass.
Although increased natural gas consumption may mean higher bills, customers can take steps to conserve energy and save money. Those steps include making sure that heaters are properly adjusted and running with clean filters, adding weather-stripping and sealing windows and doors, lowering the thermostat at night or at other times while wearing additional layers of clothing and sealing off unused rooms.
Safety is also important during extreme weather. Care should be taken that nothing obstructs a heater's air intake and that vents and flues are intact and unblocked in order to avoid the potential of carbon monoxide poisoning. Stoves and ovens should never be used for home heating.
Customers may also sign up for Texas Gas Service's Average Bill Calculation Plan, which spreads energy expense over a 12-month period. More information about the Average Bill Calculation Plan and energy-saving tips is available at www.texasgasservice.com.
Texas Gas Service provides natural gas service to more than 600 thousand customers in the state of Texas. It is a division of ONEOK, Inc. (NYSE: OKE), a diversified energy company. ONEOK is the general partner and owns 45.1 percent of ONEOK Partners, L.P. (NYSE: OKS), one of the largest publicly traded limited partnerships, which is a leader in the gathering, processing, storage and transportation of natural gas in the U.S. and owns one of the nation's premier natural gas liquids (NGL) systems, connecting much of the natural gas and NGL supply in the Mid-Continent with key market centers. ONEOK is among the largest natural gas distributors in the United States, serving more than 2 million customers in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Its energy services operation focuses primarily on marketing natural gas and related services throughout the U.S. ONEOK is a Fortune 500 company.
For more information, visit the Web sites at www.texasgasservice.com or oneok.com.
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