Gaithersburg, MD -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/28/2010 -- Working with Natural Gas Utilities, RecoverIR™ could eliminate the equivalent consumption of a month’s worth of oil from Saudi Arabia.

If the stolen amount of natural gas in the top natural gas consuming states of Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, New York, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, Georgia, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, and Texas were cut off, this would be the equivalent savings of 30,596,677 barrels of oil -which is about 30 days of oil imported from Saudi Arabia (1,031,000 barrels/day according to converted DOE EIA data ).

Greg Stockton, President of RecoverIR™, said residential consumers are paying at least an extra $2 billion each year, if only 5% of the natural gas is being stolen in residences.

Because natural gas producers are fully compensated for every cubic foot of natural gas they pump into the gas pipelines, the costs of any stolen or lost gas are paid by the bill-paying consumers.

While 5% theft might seem a little high, RecoverIR™ identified 20% of the residences in a 2009 84,000-acre survey in Detroit were stealing natural gas, and 80% of those residences were also stealing electricity. So an estimate of 5% is conservative for top natural gas consuming states
where the average number of
people in poverty is about 13%.

Why is it so hard to detect natural gas theft?

• A growing number of thieves use underground bypasses of their gas meters and pay a lesser amount each month. The meter reader cannot visually detect additional piping.
• Entire gas meters are stolen from foreclosed or abandoned homes and then installed on a home which is not being monitored for billing.
• An underground industry is growing to illegally hook up natural gas to residences.
• It is very dangerous for utility meter scouts to conduct unannounced snooping around homes in impoverished areas with high crime rates and high unemployment rates. While looking for evidence of theft, scouts and investigators can encounter vicious dogs, gun-carrying home owners, squatters, or drug dealers.
• Even fearless dedicated utility investigators can only survey so many houses in a given day, and there are few accurate statistics on the rate and timing of repeat offenders.

Natural gas utilities have two primary categories of residential thieves; households who are stealing natural gas without paying any bills, and households who are underpaying their bills because they are bypassing the installed meters. “Our proven methodology is one of the most important, substantive, and sustainable breakthroughs to be utilized in the past twenty years for natural gas and electric utilities to identify lost energy and revenue,” states Gil Lucas, Vice President. “Once utilities have clearly identified the distribution of theft, they can more accurately identify the magnitude and probable locations for energy losses within their supply and distribution systems. We are so confident in our methodology, that our services include a guarantee based upon our customers return on investment (ROI). We want our utility customers to recover lost revenue and as a result, their bill paying customers will see reductions in their monthly utility bills,” he concludes. Utilities that use RecoverIR™ Services are able to recover stolen energy, identify ‘cap and trade’ credits, and dramatically improve the collective energy efficiency of the utility customer.

Safety and energy efficiency can be positively changed by identifying energy thieves. “Someone who is stealing natural gas is never going to call the gas company to report a gas leak in their home. Also, if someone is stealing natural gas, they will not bother to insulate their home or think twice about leaving their windows open. Energy thieves have no incentive to conserve energy, therefore we believe energy thieves may be using 10%-30% more energy per household than a comparable residence which pays for its energy,” states Greg Stockton.

For more information on RecoverIR™ please visit http://www.recoverir.com or call 336-689-3658. For specifics on the ROI that RecoverIR™ can deliver, please visit the services page, http://www.recoverir.com/services.html.