NW Natural Breaks Promises on Winter Shutoff Pause

Posted on April 7, 2026 by Charlotte Shuff
Tags, General Interest, Energy

Last year, after pressure from legislators, Oregon’s three largest state-regulated utilities agreed to a voluntary pause on disconnections for many low-income and medically vulnerable customers through the rest of 2025. But NW Natural broke this promise and shut off nearly 200 of these protected households who were behind on their bills.

NW Natural shut off some families during the promised disconnection pause for owing as little as $50.

This is unacceptable. CUB is pushing regulators to direct NW Natural to make this right with the families who were impacted. We have also proposed punitive measures against the state’s largest gas utility for this fiasco.

Broken Promises

From mid-November through December, PGE, Pacific Power, and NW Natural agreed to pause disconnections for households with low incomes who receive monthly bill discounts or anyone who had a medical certificate.

These important, but limited, protections came on the heels of the longest government shutdown in US history. The shutdown delayed the distribution of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funds. These public programs help keep low-income Oregonians fed and connected to power. Additionally, during this time, many changes to federal social safety nets and other negative federal actions worsened energy security.

Read More: Legislators Secure Utility Disconnection Moratoriums for Some Customers (CUB Blog)

But this entire period, NW Natural continued to disconnect protected customers as if they never made this promise. Between November and December 2025, the gas utility disconnected 1,098 total households. This includes 198 wrongful disconnections for households NW Natural knows have low incomes.

Nearly 20% of the families that NW Natural shut off in November and December were promised protection. This is unacceptable.

How Did NW Natural Allow Wrongful Shutoffs to Happen?

On February 12th, CUB was assessing 2025 disconnection data from NW Natural and noticed a big problem. There were bill discount program customers disconnected in November and December, even though there were supposed to be protections in place. We immediately jumped into action to figure out what happened and reached out to the utility. A week later, NW Natural’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Resource Planning contacted CUB’s Executive Director, Bob Jenks, to inform him of the Company’s error.

. In formal responses to CUB’s requests for information, NW Natural stated to regulators that it “discovered that we did not implement the voluntary temporary winter disconnect moratorium for bill discount programs as intended.” It further noted that “processes were in place to do so.” The mistake was made due to an “internal miscommunication.”

After over a month of investigation and back and forth, we are still not satisfied with this explanation. When a utility makes a commitment to Oregonians, legislators, and regulators, we expect them to hold their word. No one in Oregon can choose their utility company, making the impact of these broken promises even more difficult to swallow.

A Fiasco for Many Oregon Families

NW Natural has claimed that its mistake was made due to an “internal miscommunication.” But this is not a miscommunication; it is a fiasco.

According to NW Natural, a total of 198 households (603 people) with low incomes were wrongfully shut off. Of those families:

99 homes were reconnected the same day or the next day
40 households were disconnected for 2-13 days
16 families were disconnected for two weeks or more

One household spent 78 days without gas service in the middle of winter because of a $54 balance.

There are at most 35 households that NW Natural has not been able to make any contact with and remain without gas service. This includes 6 households for which the utility does not have up-to-date contact information.

Cascading Impacts of Losing Gas Service in the Winter

When a home’s gas gets shut off, it can very easily cause a devastating cascading effect for that family. We use utilities in so many ways in our home: physical safety and comfort, food preparation, healthcare, and more. Losing gas comes with many hidden costs, especially for low-income households that can least afford these expenses.

For those with medical conditions that are impacted by temperature, a shutoff can be life-threatening. Losing gas for heating can quickly turn into an unsafe situation for many Oregonians, especially if temperatures go below freezing during the winter. It can also mean losing a way to cook food on a stove or oven, forcing more expensive options for a hot meal. And going without hot water is more than just an inconvenience.

Shutoffs can also cause families to lose their housing entirely. Without heating, renters can be evicted. Oregon is facing a housing crisis. We should not be continuing shutoff policies that contribute to homelessness.

NW Natural Must Make Up for Their Mistake

CUB is heavily pressuring NW Natural to make up for this massive mistake to impacted families. While the utility has taken some steps, it is not enough.

So far, NW Natural has taken three actions:

Refunded all impacted customer accounts for the fees associated with the disconnection
Attempted contact or made contact with those customers who still remained disconnected in mid-February to reconnect them
Credited $150 to all impacted customer accounts

But CUB does not agree that giving a family $150 for spending days, weeks, or months without gas during a disconnection pause is adequate.

In collaboration with other advocates, CUB is proposing going much further.

For impacted families, CUB is asking NW Natural to:

Zero out past-due balances from the time of disconnection to now
Pay each household $50 plus $25 per day for each day they were incorrectly shut off (e.g., disconnected 7 days = $225)
Raise the disconnection “trigger” amount to at least $150 past due for customers on payment plans, instead of $50

These costs would come at the expense of the utility, not be passed off to other customers.

Second, CUB has proposed adding a $10,000 penalty for each of the 198 impacted households ($1,980,000). This would be in the form of a “disallowance,” or withholding what NW Natural can collect on customer bills. We also asked regulators to conduct an audit on the utility’s Customer Service and Customer Information Systems to ensure something like this cannot happen again.

Nothing will fully make up for a wrongful disconnection. But we need NW Natural to play a bigger role in fixing this fiasco.

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