New Jersey commercial gas: BGSS and territory

Four gas utilities, and where each one delivers

New Jersey gas distribution is split among four investor-owned local distribution companies, and they do not map onto the state in clean blocks. PSE&G is the largest, with gas customers across large parts of sixteen counties running from Bergen and Hudson down through Middlesex, Mercer and Camden to Gloucester. New Jersey Natural Gas covers much of Monmouth, Ocean, Morris, Middlesex, Burlington and Atlantic. South Jersey Gas holds most of the southern part of the state. Elizabethtown Gas serves mainly Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Morris, Sussex, Union and Warren. A county list is only indicative, because a town inside a listed county can still sit with a different utility, and the address that decides service is the service address on the meter. The utility publishes its own territory map, and the bill names the delivery company in the first block, which is the fastest way to settle it.

• PSE&G: the largest gas territory, spread over sixteen counties in the north, centre and south-west.
• New Jersey Natural Gas: much of Monmouth, Ocean, Morris, Middlesex, Burlington and Atlantic.
• South Jersey Gas: most of southern New Jersey, including Cape May, Cumberland and Salem.
• Elizabethtown Gas: mainly Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Morris, Sussex, Union and Warren.

The rate class, not the company, sets the delivery charge

Each local distribution company draws its own commercial rate classes, and the class — not the utility's name — sets the delivery charge and decides what a site may buy. PSE&G's published commercial schedule runs from General Service Gas, the general nonresidential class, up through Large Volume Gas and a Transportation Gas Service for customers who arrange their own supply. New Jersey Natural Gas files General Service, General Service Large and an interruptible class. Elizabethtown Gas runs a ladder that starts at Small General Service and General Large Service, continues through Large Volume Delivery and General Delivery, and includes a firm gas transportation class. These lines matter before any quote is requested because the class fixes two things at once: the delivery half of the bill, and whether the account is allowed to separate supply from delivery at all. A small site sitting below the class threshold may have no transportation product to buy into, however competitive the market looks from outside.

• PSE&G: General Service Gas, Large Volume Gas and Transportation Gas Service, by size and supply arrangement.
• NJNG: General Service, General Service Large and an interruptible class.
• Elizabethtown Gas: Small General Service, General Large Service, Large Volume Delivery, General Delivery and a firm transport class.
• South Jersey Gas draws its own general-service and large-volume classes in its tariff.
• The class sets both the delivery charge and whether supply can be separated from delivery.

BGSS is the utility's default supply, not a retail rate

If you never choose a supplier, the account sits on Basic Gas Supply Service: the utility buys the commodity on your behalf and passes the cost through, while still delivering the gas over its own pipes. The important structural point is that BGSS is a regulated supply pass-through, not a tariff the utility sets at will and not a fixed retail price. It is filed with the Board of Public Utilities and reviewed on a cycle rather than continuously, with the utility's procurement cost and its balancing adjustments reconciled through the same tariff case. New Jersey Natural Gas illustrates the cadence: its regulatory filings show an annual petition for review of BGSS and its conservation incentive rates, filed on 1 June for the fiscal year that begins on 1 October, so the supply figure a customer sees is one that has been through a docket. Every other LDC files its own version on its own fiscal calendar, so the reset dates do not line up across the state. New Jersey also splits BGSS into a monthly and a periodic version, and the tariff assigns each customer class to one. The Board's gas-supply framework sets the dividing line for the larger commercial and industrial customers: NJNG and South Jersey Gas customers using 250,000 therms or more a year take Monthly BGSS, which resets with the utility's costs every month, while smaller commercial and industrial customers take Periodic BGSS on a longer, prescribed interval. PSE&G's tariff sets its default supply monthly, and Elizabethtown Gas assigns BGSS-M to its larger delivery classes and BGSS-P to its smaller ones. The filing mechanism sits in N.J.A.C. 14:4-6; the reset frequency sits in each utility's tariff.

• BGSS covers the commodity only — delivery stays with the utility on its own tariff.
• It is a filed, reviewed pass-through, reset periodically rather than tracked hourly.
• The reset date is utility-specific; NJNG's annual review is filed 1 June for a 1 October year.
• BGSS comes in a monthly and a periodic version, and the class assignment sets which applies.
• Larger C&I customers — 250,000 therms a year and above at NJNG and South Jersey Gas — take Monthly BGSS.

What a competitive supplier has to be in New Jersey

New Jersey does not have an open market in the sense that anyone who can invoice may sell gas. A company must hold a licence from the Board of Public Utilities before it may provide, market, enrol customers for, or contract to supply gas to retail customers, and the licensing rules are set out in the Board's energy supplier regulations at N.J.A.C. 14:4-5. The licence carries continuing conditions: registration details that must be kept current, periodic updates, and a surety bond, with the Board able to deny, suspend or revoke. That matters operationally because the comparison materials and supplier lists are organised by utility territory. A supplier authorised to serve PSE&G customers is not automatically authorised in the Elizabethtown Gas or South Jersey Gas territory, so the check is the pair — supplier and territory — and not the supplier's name alone.

• Only a Board-licensed supplier may sell gas supply service to retail customers.
• Licensing runs through N.J.A.C. 14:4-5, with a bond and annual updating duties.
• Supplier lists are published by utility territory, so authorisation is territory-specific.
• Confirm the licence and the territory together before treating an offer as real.

Firm transportation is a separate product, and the door can close

Choosing a supplier does not by itself move a site onto transportation service; the account has to qualify for a transportation class in the utility's tariff, and that class has its own volume and load tests. PSE&G's schedules show how narrow the door can be. Its interruptible transportation class, TSG-NF, requires the customer to hold an alternate fuel and to have a connected load of at least 150 therms an hour; the utility also recognises a firm transportation class carrying the same 150-therms-an-hour minimum connected load, but states that the rate is no longer available to new applicants. That is the pattern worth checking anywhere: a class can stay in the tariff, and stay available to the customers already on it, while being closed to new enrolment, so availability is a question for the utility rather than something a supplier can promise. For NJNG, South Jersey Gas and Elizabethtown Gas the controlling volume and load tests sit in the current tariff schedule for the specific class, so the answer is read off the class the meter falls into rather than from a single state-wide number.

• Transportation is a tariff class the account must qualify for, separate from choosing a supplier.
• PSE&G TSG-NF: interruptible, requires an alternate fuel and at least 150 therms an hour of connected load.
• PSE&G's firm transportation class carries the same load test but is closed to new applicants.
• A transport class can remain in the tariff while being unavailable to new customers.
• Read the load and volume test from the specific class, not from a state-wide figure.

Why a New Jersey gas profile is not flat

EIA's figures put the commercial sector at roughly a tenth of national natural gas consumption while natural gas supplies over a third of the sector's end-use energy, and the load is dominated by space heating and water heating rather than by a steady process draw. The practical consequence is that an annual therm total describes the year badly. A heating-led site can carry most of its consumption in a handful of winter months, which means the volume a supplier has to buy against and the volumes that actually arrive are two different shapes, and only one of them was assumed when the offer was built. The reader can measure this directly: divide a January therm total by a July total from the same year and the answer is the winter-to-summer ratio for that site — at a heating-dominated building it is a multiple, not a fraction. Ask every supplier what shape they priced, and whether it was derived from the account's own monthly history or from a generic commercial profile.

• Commercial gas load is heating-led, so the annual total hides the shape.
• A fixed price per therm protects the price, not the volume consumed.
• Compute your own winter-to-summer ratio from two months of your own bills.
• Ask whether the pricing shape came from your usage history or a generic profile.

Firm, interruptible, and where winter risk sits

Deliverability in winter is a contractual question before it is a weather question. Pipeline service comes in priorities: primary firm transportation is the protected category, other firm service ranks below it, and interruptible service carries no capacity reservation, has the lowest scheduling priority, and is typically unavailable when the system tightens. The Natural Gas Supply Association's review of Winter Storm Fern — the late-January 2026 arctic outbreak, roughly two weeks of sustained cold — found that pipelines issued operational flow orders and that secondary firm and interruptible transportation became unavailable at numerous delivery points, with interruptible storage withdrawals unavailable at several northern storage facilities, while primary firm service continued to be served. For a New Jersey buyer the translation is straightforward. If the site can genuinely stop burning gas for a few days, that optionality can be priced. If it cannot — a kitchen, a process load, a clinical or laboratory building — then the priority of the transportation behind the supply matters as much as the commodity price, and the storage question is not whether capacity exists but whether the withdrawal right is firm. The Board of Public Utilities has measured the system-side version of that risk. In a Board order dated 29 June 2022 it adopted a study of the interstate pipeline capacity that feeds New Jersey's gas distribution companies. On a normal winter day the study found about 3,196 MDth a day of surplus capacity, narrowing to roughly 1,776 MDth a day on a historically experienced peak day and to about 274 MDth a day on the modelled winter design day. In a rare one-in-ninety design-day case it modelled a shortfall of about 153 MDth a day, and in a combined scenario that paired a transcontinental pipeline outage with that design day, a shortfall of about 525 MDth a day for the 2026-27 winter. The Board's finding was that firm capacity should meet firm demand through 2030 under normal, historically experienced and design-day conditions, which places the residual risk in extreme events rather than in an ordinary January.

• Primary firm transportation is served first; interruptible service is last and can be curtailed.
• During Fern, operational flow orders and constrained secondary and interruptible service were widespread.
• Interruptible storage withdrawals were unavailable at some northern facilities in that event.
• Price interruptible supply only against a real ability to stop using gas.
• For a load that cannot stop, ask about firm transportation priority and firm withdrawal rights.
• The BPU's June 2022 capacity order found surplus on a normal winter day, narrowing to a small margin on the design day.
• Modelled shortfalls appear only in a rare one-in-ninety design day or in a combined pipeline-outage scenario.

Reading a New Jersey gas bill, and comparing two offers

A commercial gas bill in this state has three layers worth separating. Distribution is the utility's regulated charge for moving the gas, and it is identical whichever supplier supplies the commodity, so it cancels out of a supply comparison. Commodity is the gas itself. Transportation and capacity treatment sits between them and is where two apparently similar offers usually diverge: one price may include delivery to the city gate and the capacity reservation behind it, another may leave the buyer exposed to the cost of moving the gas from the wellhead. Normalise before comparing. Convert everything to therms, because quotes and meter reads also appear in Ccf and Mcf, where one Mcf is ten Ccf and a Ccf carries roughly one therm subject to the utility's heat factor. Then fix the term length, the month the term begins, and the usage shape, and only then compare the numbers that remain. Finally ask what happens at the end of the term.

• Distribution: regulated, supplier-independent, and therefore a constant in any comparison.
• Commodity: the only line a supplier genuinely competes on.
• Transportation and capacity: often the difference between two offers that look alike.
• Put both quotes in therms on the same term and start month before comparing.
• Ask for the end-of-term notice requirement in writing at the point of signing.

What to gather, and how a New Jersey gas review runs

Gas pricing is underwritten per account, so an incomplete request produces a placeholder rather than a quote. The useful starting set is twelve months of therm totals by month, the account and meter numbers, the service address, the delivery utility from the meter, the current agreement's end date and the notice period required to leave it, and a plain statement of whether any load at the site can be interrupted. Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory, and a supplier must be licensed and authorised in that LDC's territory before it can serve the account at all, so those checks come before any commercial discussion.

• Twelve months of therm totals, by month, from the actual bills.
• Account and meter numbers, and the delivery utility named on the bill.
• The current contract's end date and the notice period inside the agreement.
• Whether the site is dual-fuel or has any interruptible load, and how long it could stop.
• Who controls the utility account if the building is master-metered or leased.
• HighGround may receive provider compensation on completed purchases; disclosed site-wide.
• Sending an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

PUT THE OPTIONS SIDE BY SIDE

Your comparison checklist

Common questions