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High costs for natural gas will cause heating bills to rise an estimated 34 percent this December for customers of Xcel Energy.
Typical residential heating bills will be $171 in December, not including electric service, compared with $127 last December.
Small-business heating bills for December are projected at $776, compared with $573 last December.
Xcel said the estimated increases stem from rising costs for natural gas. Natural-gas prices already had more than doubled in the past year before Hurricane Katrina hit, disrupting gas production from the Gulf of Mexico and pushing prices to record highs.
Xcel passes natural-gas price changes to customers on a dollar-for-dollar basis, taking neither extra profit nor loss.
