FOLEY — Riviera Utilities gas customers will soon see a change in rates.

In a news release Wednesday, the utility provider announced that it will modify gas rates for residential and commercial customers effective on all bills rendered after Aug. 31.

According to Riviera spokesman David Horton, he existing general- service rate groups too many different types of customers under one rate.

“The new structure will create three separate rate classes which will include residential, small commercial and large commercial customers,” he stated in the release. “This will allow us to more fairly bill customers based on their type of usage.”

“After careful consideration, we have determined an increase of 2% for an average customer, coupled with a weather equalization component to the monthly Purchase Gas Adjustment (PGA) is a more fair way to calculate a customer’s bill in their particular rate class,” Richard Peterson, manager of Gas, Water and Wasterwater departments, added. “This component will help match the revenue requirement in the rates when warmer weather reduces our total gas volume sold, and it will give a volume discount back to the customer during more severe winters when higher gas volumes are sold.”

Riviera General Manager Mike Dugger explained further the reason behind the change.

“This is being done in an effort to more appropriately apply the pass through of savings associated with the lower cost of gas,” he stated in the release. “ Riviera has made an approximate 2 percent increase in the first step of its basic rate for some cases. This increase is small compared to the discounts provided due to the current lower cost of the gas supply. Riviera plans to continue passing the discounts on to the customers in a reasonable fashion. The bottom line is that with these small modifications to the rate classifications, all customers should continue to see much lower costs for gas than during the past several years.”

In the release, Horton cited benefits of natural gas.

“Over the last five years, the average Riviera residential customer has paid 14 percent less for natural gas,” he stated in the release. “Other high use customers are saving as much as 50 percent in that same time period due to the larger amounts of gas they buy because those rates have been volume discounted. The energy value of natural gas is tremendous. The cost of one Therm, or 100,000 BTU’s, of natural gas for our average residential customer is $1.83 compared to $2.90 for our electric customers, and the average cost of gas is lower when more gas appliances are used. In today’s market, natural gas is very economical.”