With blistering cold gripping the Prairies over the past week you may have noticed your furnace running more than normal, and so has SaskEnergy.

Natural Gas usage has set new daily records in the province, with peak demand on January 12 reaching a consumption rate of 1.70 petajoules per day (PJ/d). Eclipsing the previous record of 1.65 PJ/d set on January 6, 2022. 

“Natural gas is essential for Saskatchewan residents as we heat our homes and businesses during the coldest days of winter,” said Dustin Duncan, Minister Responsible for SaskEnergy.

“As a result of our government’s decision to remove the carbon tax from home heating, Saskatchewan families saved over $1M per day during the coldest weekend of this season.” 

This uptick in consumption isn’t limited to just January 12 however, with January 13th and 14th also exceeding the record at 1.68 PJ/d and 1.66 PJ/d respectively. The demand comes from across SaskEnergy’s customer base, driven primarily by power generation and residential heating. 

SaskEnergy measures daily natural gas consumption for the 24-hour period from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. A petajoule is a unit of measurement equivalent to one million gigajoules (GJ) of natural gas. An average Saskatchewan home consumes about 100 GJ of natural gas each year.