MXenergy Inc. appeals from a superior court judgment affirming a decision of the Georgia Public Service Commission “the commission”.1 It did not err in so doing, and we therefore affirm the judgment of the superior court. The dispute in this action arises from the “true up settlement process” applied to natural gas marketers by the commission, as discussed in our earlier decision of Infinite Energy v. Georgia Public Svc. Comm. , 257 Ga. App. 757 572 SE2d 91 2002: Atlanta Gas Light Company is an electing distribution company under the Natural Gas Competition and Deregulation Act OCGA § 46-4-150 et seq. As a distribution company, Atlanta Gas Light does not sell natural gas directly to customers, but provides the distribution system used by certified marketers to deliver gas to their customers. The marketers estimate how much gas their respective customers will use and then supply Atlanta Gas Light with gas for delivery to the customers. But because marketers cannot predict exactly how much gas their customers will use, they sometimes supply less gas than their customers actually consume. Their customers then end up using gas that was delivered by another marketer. But regardless of who supplied the gas, the marketers charge their customers for the gas they actually use. This means that some marketers sell gas they did not tender to Atlanta Gas Light, while others tender gas that they did not sell. Consequently, there must be a process in place to reconcile, or “true up,” the amount of gas a marketer delivers to Atlanta Gas Light with the actual amount of gas used by that marketer’s customers. Without such a process, some marketers would end up subsidizing the sales of —providing free gas to —other marketers. Footnote omitted. Id. at 757. In Infinite Energy , we affirmed the superior court’s decision to affirm the commission’s adoption of a true up process that was proposed by Atlanta Gas Light and marketers in 1999. Id. at 758.2 In the case before us, we address the application of that true up process to a shortfall created by the bankruptcy of a marketer.
In 2008, Catalyst Natural Gas, LLC filed for bankruptcy, at a time when it had supplied less gas than its customers actually consumed, and thus, as we discussed in Infinite Energy , supra, 257 Ga. App. at 757, had sold gas to its customers that it had not tendered to Atlanta Gas Light. The superior court and the parties refer to this as a “short” position on the part of the marketer. Catalyst’s “short” position meant that, ordinarily, it would pay other marketers in a “long” position for the gas imbalance, but “although many of the long marketers have filed proof of claims against Catalyst in bankruptcy court, as unsecured creditors it is unlikely that there will be any appreciable distribution of funds to them.”
