New Hampshire business natural gas market

Two distributors, and a state that mostly moves gas rather than burns it

New Hampshire has no natural gas reserves and no production, so every therm delivered in the state arrives by pipeline from Canada or from the surrounding New England states. EIA adds the fact that makes this market unusual: in 2024, 85 percent of the gas that entered New Hampshire left it again, primarily for Vermont and Maine. The state is a corridor, not a sink, and its own consumption in 2024 was the third lowest in the country. Two investor-owned companies do the local distribution. Liberty Utilities' EnergyNorth business serves the Merrimack Valley corridor and beyond, and its tariff lists the cities and towns it may serve: Allenstown, Amherst, Auburn, Bedford, Belmont, Berlin, Boscawen, Bow, Concord, Derry, Franklin, Gilford, Goffstown, Hanover, Hollis, Hooksett, Hudson, Keene, Laconia, Lebanon, Litchfield, Londonderry, Loudon, Manchester, Merrimack, Milford, Nashua, Northfield, Pelham, Pembroke, Sanbornton, Tilton and Windham, with part of Canterbury and Winnisquam. Unitil's Northern Utilities covers the Seacoast and the Rochester-Dover-Somersworth cluster, and its town list runs Atkinson, Brentwood, Dover, Durham, East Kingston, East Rochester, Epping, Exeter, Gonic, Greenland, Hampton, Hampton Falls, Kensington, Kingston, Madbury, Newington, North Hampton, Plaistow, Portsmouth, Rochester, Rollinsford, Salem, Seabrook, Somersworth and Stratham. A business with sites in Manchester and Portsmouth therefore buys the same commodity through two different companies, two tariffs and two supply portfolios.

• New Hampshire has no gas reserves or production; gas arrives by pipeline from Canada and neighbouring states.
• In 2024, 85 percent of the gas entering New Hampshire left the state again, primarily for Vermont and Maine.
• Liberty Utilities (EnergyNorth) serves the Merrimack Valley corridor: Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Derry, Keene, Laconia and Lebanon among its named towns.
• Unitil's Northern Utilities serves the Seacoast: Portsmouth, Dover, Rochester, Exeter, Hampton, Salem and Somersworth among its named towns.
• EIA reports the electric power sector as the largest gas consumer in the state, at more than half of the gas used.

The commodity line is a filed pass-through, and it has a cap

Both tariffs run a cost-of-gas clause rather than a market rate, and the mechanism is more useful to a buyer than any single number in it. The charge is set seasonally — Northern's winter season begins 1 November and its summer season 1 May — and the tariff then allows the company to adjust the approved seasonal charge monthly, without further Commission action, based on its calculation of the projected over- or under-collection against actual gas costs. That is what makes the commodity line on a New Hampshire bill move in the middle of a heating season in either direction. The protection worth knowing about is in the same clause: cumulative upward adjustments may not exceed 25 percent of the approved seasonal rate, while reductions carry no such limit. Liberty's tariff states the same ceiling for its own cost-of-gas rate and adds that the operation of the clause remains subject to the Commission's powers of suspension and investigation. The tariff in force for Liberty's New Hampshire gas service was authorised by Commission Order No. 28,194 dated 7 November 2025 in Docket DG 23-067, and the reconciliation accounts behind the mechanism carry interest, bad debt and working capital adjustments and are trued up annually. For a business comparing a marketer's offer against utility supply, the point is that the benchmark is a regulated pass-through with a documented ceiling on interim increases, not a price the utility sets at will.

• The cost-of-gas charge is seasonal: Northern's winter season starts 1 November, its summer season 1 May.
• The approved seasonal charge may be adjusted monthly without further Commission action, based on projected over- or under-collection.
• Cumulative upward adjustments are capped at 25 percent of the approved seasonal rate; reductions are not capped.
• Liberty's New Hampshire gas tariff in force was authorised by Commission Order No. 28,194 dated 7 November 2025, Docket DG 23-067.
• Reconciliation balances carry interest, bad debt and working capital adjustments, trued up after the season.

Your class is set by winter share, not only by annual volume

Commercial and industrial gas classes in New Hampshire are not simply a size ladder, and the second test catches businesses that assume they are. Liberty's tariff splits the commercial and industrial group into a high winter use family, classes G-41 through G-46, and a low winter use family, G-51 through G-58. Eligibility for the high winter use classes is stated in the tariff in two parts: an annual volume band, and a winter period usage that is at least 67 percent of annual usage. Class G-41 is the low annual use class in that family, for accounts using up to 10,000 therms a year; G-42 is the medium annual use class, above 10,000 and up to 100,000 therms a year. Both require the winter share. The tariff then computes separate winter and summer cost-of-gas factors for the high winter use group and for the low winter use group. Two sites with the same annual consumption can therefore sit in different classes — and be measured against different cost-of-gas factors — purely because one of them burns most of its gas between November and April. A restaurant, a laundry or a hotel with a winter-heavy profile is not the same gas customer as a warehouse with identical annual throughput, and the tariff says so.

• Commercial and industrial classes are split into a high winter use family (G-41 to G-46) and a low winter use family (G-51 to G-58).
• High winter use eligibility requires winter period usage at or above 67 percent of annual usage.
• G-41 covers up to 10,000 therms a year; G-42 runs above that to 100,000 therms a year, on the same winter ratio.
• Separate winter and summer cost-of-gas factors are computed for the high winter use and low winter use groups.
• Annual volume alone does not place an account: the winter share does half the work.

Transportation service is the switch, and the balancing is what changes hands

Where a business buys its gas supply from a marketer instead of the utility, it takes firm transportation service and the utility's role narrows to delivery and balancing. The tariff spells out what that means, and the detail is the answer to why winter supply is a different business from summer supply. The company offers peaking service as a company-managed resource, with a supplier service agreement that specifies a maximum daily peaking quantity, a peaking service account and a rule curve governing its use. It levies a firm transportation cost of gas charge to recover the increase in gas costs attributable to supplemental liquid fuels used for firm transportation customers — in other words, the tariff itself acknowledges that on some days the system is run on something other than pipeline gas. Suppliers are subject to daily balancing obligations and imbalance charges, and on a critical day an over- or under-delivery is penalised at a multiple of a published daily gas index rather than at cost. When a business moves to transportation service it is not just changing a line item: it is handing the daily balancing of its load to a supplier who is measured, and charged, day by day. That is the question to ask of any marketer quoting a New Hampshire commercial account.

• Transportation service leaves the utility delivering and balancing, and moves supply to a marketer.
• The tariff provides peaking service as a company-managed resource with a maximum daily peaking quantity and a rule curve.
• A firm transportation cost of gas charge recovers the added cost of supplemental liquid fuels for firm transportation customers.
• Suppliers face daily balancing obligations and imbalance charges, with critical-day penalties set as multiples of a daily index.
• Ask a marketer how it balances a winter day, not only what it quotes for the year.

Keene is on a different system, in different units

One part of the state needs its own paragraph, because the arithmetic on the bill is different there. Liberty's tariff carries a separate character of service and a separate cost-of-gas clause for its Keene Division, and the reason is the supply itself: the division delivers either propane-air gas or natural gas, depending on which system feeds the premises. The tariff states the heat content of each at nominally 740 British thermal units per cubic foot for propane-air on the propane-air distribution system and nominally 1,000 BTU per cubic foot for natural gas on the natural gas system, and for the rest of its territory sets the character of service as natural gas or equivalent at nominally one therm in each one hundred cubic feet. It also sets out the conversion a meter read needs: the volume in hundreds of cubic feet is multiplied by the average BTU per cubic foot of the gas sent out for the period and divided by 1,000. A Keene account therefore has three facts to establish before any comparison — which system serves the building, the heat content of what actually arrives, and the meter read in Ccf — because a therm is a unit of heat, not of volume, and the two systems sell the same cubic foot with different amounts of heat in it.

• The Keene Division has its own character of service and its own cost-of-gas clause in the same tariff.
• Keene is supplied as either propane-air gas or natural gas, depending on the distribution system at the premises.
• The tariff prices propane-air at nominally 740 BTU per cubic foot and natural gas at nominally 1,000.
• Elsewhere the tariff supplies natural gas or equivalent at nominally one therm per 100 cubic feet.
• Therms are computed from Ccf reads using the period's average BTU per cubic foot divided by 1,000.

There is no gas equivalent to community power

New Hampshire broke the electricity market open and left the gas market alone, and the statute is where that shows. RSA 53-E authorises municipalities and counties to aggregate retail electric customers, and it defines aggregation as the grouping of retail electric customers; the electric aggregator is a municipality or county acting within its boundaries. Nothing in it reaches gas, so the community-power route that now reshapes the supply decision for many New Hampshire businesses on the electric side has no counterpart on the gas side. What a commercial gas account has instead is the tariff: the class it qualifies for, the seasonal cost-of-gas charge and its reconciliation, and — if its volume justifies it — the transportation election that puts a marketer in the supply seat. For a multi-site operator that is a rare asymmetry worth planning around: the electric supply at a New Hampshire site may be set by a coalition rate unless the account opts out, while the gas supply at the same site is a contract the business either negotiates itself or leaves on the utility's schedule.

• RSA 53-E covers the aggregation of retail electric customers only, and defines an aggregator as a municipality or county.
• No gas aggregation programme follows from it in New Hampshire.
• A commercial gas account's alternatives are the tariff, its class and a transportation election with a marketer.
• On a multi-site portfolio, the electric and gas supply decisions at the same building follow different rules.

What to gather before a New Hampshire gas quote

One eligibility caveat applies to every energy page on this site: competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory, and municipal systems, co-operatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all. New Hampshire's gas gate is narrow in a different way from its electric one: two investor-owned distributors and no municipal gas systems, so the test is simply whether the premises is on a main — and a site that is not on one has no supplier conversation to have. HighGround may receive compensation from providers on completed purchases, and an enquiry places no order and switches no supplier: nothing moves until a contract is signed, and the account stays on utility supply until a transportation arrangement actually starts. The file that makes a New Hampshire gas enquiry answerable begins with the delivering company and the class, because those two facts decide which cost-of-gas schedule the account is measured against and whether a marketer can serve it at all.

• Twelve months of bills from the delivering company, with supply and delivery separated by line item.
• The rate class on the account — G-41 to G-46 or G-51 to G-58 on Liberty's tariff — and the winter ratio behind it.
• Annual and winter volumes in therms, and the meter reads in Ccf that produced them.
• The meter size and whether the premises is on a main the company can serve.
• On-site equipment: what the gas is used for, and whether the site can interrupt it on a critical day.
• For a Keene address, which system serves the building and the BTU content of the gas delivered.
• Eligibility for competitive supply is decided by the address, the meter and the utility territory; a site off the mains has none.
• HighGround may be compensated on completed purchases; an enquiry orders nothing and switches nothing.

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