Summit Utilites asks state regulators to approve increase in natural-gas rates
OKLAHOMA CITY — Summit Utilities Oklahoma recently asked state regulators to authorize a modest increase in its natural-gas rates.
SUO proposes to increase its earned return from 5.97% last year to a 9.6% return on equity, and to boost its revenues by $3,390,111 annually.
The company’s request would increase the average monthly bill of a Summit residential customer in Oklahoma (a consumer of 4,300 cubic feet of natural gas) by $2.59, according to Sheri Richard, director of regulatory finance and rates. Her office is in the corporate headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Richard testified that the residential class would shoulder 68.95% of the proposed rate hike, or $2,333,481; the general service class, 14.41%, or $488,515; the commercial service classes, 12.32%, or $417,662; and the large commercial service class, 4.32%, or $146,453.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission approved a Summit base rate increase of $4.4 million in 2025 that went into effect Jan. 1, 2026. That amount was “included in the calculation” of the $3.39 million revenue deficiency, Richard said.
Summit Utilities serves 525,000 families and businesses in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texarkana, Texas, via 17,000 miles of gas main pipelines in the three regions, the company reports.
In testimony filed with the Corporation Commission, the company pointed to “significant investments in its Oklahoma distribution system to replace an aging infrastructure” last year.
Summit reported it spent almost $27 million in 2025 to replace gas mains and service lines in Oklahoma, and $11.7 million on other capital improvements such as transportation equipment and new meters.
Historically, meters often were placed at a customer’s property line, said Cason Sanders, manager of engineering for Summit Utilities Oklahoma. However, the widening of roads, construction of new roads, and increased traffic along property lines “have rendered many of these meters vulnerable to vehicular damage, damage from state or county road crews maintaining drainage ditches adjacent to roadways, vandalism, farm equipment, or property owners mowing their lawns,” Sanders related.
To mitigate the risk of damage to meters installed at property lines, he said, SUO will move the meter to the customer’s building wall, relocate the meter to a safe location farther from the property line, or install a barricade around the meter.
SUO spent $38.7 million on capital additions in 2025, compared to $41.1 million in 2024 and almost $34.9 million in 2023, company records reflect.
SUO is a local gas distribution company whose infrastructure is comprised solely of distribution assets, Sanders said. SUO “does not own any transmission assets in Oklahoma.”
Sanders earned college degrees in chemical engineering and business administration, and is licensed as a professional engineer from Oklahoma. In 2016 he began working for CenterPoint Energy as an engineer supporting the Oklahoma region; previously he was the supervisor of operations for CenterPoint’s Altus area.
CenterPoint Energy sold its natural-gas assets in Oklahoma and Arkansas to Summit Utilities in 2021.
Summit absorbed from CenterPoint almost 100,000 residential, commercial, industrial and transportation customers in 91 Oklahoma cities and towns. Those include Lawton, Elgin, Fletcher, Sterling, Cache, Geronimo, Altus, Apache, Arapaho, Blair, Burns Flat, Chickasha, Comanche, Duke, Duncan, Mangum, Marlow, Martha, Olustee, Temple, Vance Air Force Base, and Weatherford.
Today SUO has approximately 2,807 miles of distribution pipeline, not including service lines, “of which approximately 43% has a vintage prior to 1970 or an unknown installation date,” Sanders testified Bare steel pipe constitutes approximately 14 miles of the SUO system, and plastic pipe accounts for 1,103 miles, he said. The balance, 1,690 miles of pipe, is “categorized as coated steel.”
Bare and legacy steel “are susceptible to corrosion failures; mechanically joined facilities are susceptible to gasket, seal, or equipment failures,” Sanders said.
Also, legacy plastic prior to 1974 is susceptible to “low-ductility inner-wall” cracking failure caused by a deterioration of the materials, and legacy plastic prior to 1984 is susceptible to slow crack growth,” he added.
Replacing those facilities “is the only way that the risk associated with them can truly be addressed and mitigated,” Sanders said.
Last year, SUO “retired” 32.75 miles of at-risk pipe in system improvement projects, he said. Replacement of those assets “avoids future leaks or material failures which increases system safety and reliability.”
SUO also asked state regulators to approve the company’s one-time annual credit to its customers of the Excess Accumulated Deferred Income Tax (EDIT) resulting from the 2017 federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduction of the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
On April 1, 2026, SUO returned a $204,893 credit to its customers based on the 2024 calendar year tax information. Those credits amounted to $1.60 per residential customer; $3.18 per general service customer; $21.06 per customer in the commercial service classes; and $404.83 per customer in the large commercial service class, Richard testified.
A procedural schedule for various motions and hearings in the case will be established soon.