Natural Gas Utilities Submit Detailed Gas Distribution Cost Data

PG&E and SoCalGas/SDG&E (the Sempra Utilities) filed responses to an Administrative Law Judge ruling in the CPUC's Long-Term Gas Planning docket (R.24-09-012), providing detailed cost and operational data on gas distribution infrastructure.

PG&E completed Excel templates covering pipeline replacement, regulator station upgrades, and maintenance for 2021-2024, noting that it often does not track data exactly in the form requested and in some cases had to reformat or estimate based on internal systems. Its filings show average annual pipeline replacement spending of approximately $653 million, with average costs of:

• $33,700 per service for main replacement projects;
• $35,000 per service for service-only programs; and
• Nearly $3.9 million per mile of main replaced.

According to PG&E, project planning timelines often exceeded 1,000 days before construction.

SoCalGas/SDG&E submitted similar datasets, structured according to the same CPUC templates, reporting significantly higher total replacement expenditures: over $1.26 billion across four years for SoCalGas alone, and lower maintenance costs per service than PG&E.

SoCalGas reported approximately $22,400 per service under main replacement programs, $54,800 per service for service-only jobs, and $2.53 million per mile of main replaced, with faster planning timelines (392 days for main projects and 107 days for service-only work).

SDG&E submitted its cost templates separately as attachments but follow the same methodology.

All three utilities emphasized that the data are historical, not ratemaking forecasts, and in some cases required adjustments because utility tracking systems do not natively align with the CPUC’s template structure.

INSTANT ANALYSIS

These filings confirm how expensive and slow California’s gas-distribution replacement machine has become, and how uneven performance is across utilities.

PG&E spent $653 million annually with extended timelines, while SoCalGas had double the total spend but greater throughput, and completed more work at lower per-unit cost and in less time. That contrast may invite scrutiny of whether higher throughput should be rewarded, or whether all such capital spending should be constrained under Senate Bill 1221’s managed-contraction framework.

The Commission is now assembling data that provides nominal "apples-to-apples" visibility into the scale of invested capital for the critical infrastructure supporting California’s gas network. That dataset will influence decision-making as the state marches toward a strategic contraction of the network.