BATON ROUGE - Following Entergy's sale of natural gas distribution to Delta Utilities, many residents have been concerned about an extra service charge. Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis explained the fee some people are seeing.

"The sale from Entergy to Delta went into effect July 1 and there’s some lag time between the account rolling over. So for instance, you may have still been billed for 10 days on Entergy after July 1, so your Delta bill will reflect, let’s say, day 11th through 31st and your Entergy bill will reflect day one through day 10," Lewis said.

Lewis explained that the flat service charge was divided between Entergy and Delta, based on how long each provided service during the month. An example he gave was if a customer was with Delta for 20 days, they were billed for those 20 days and the service fee, while Entergy billed for the other 11. 

Lewis said there will not be any new charges and that most of what people are seeing on their bills is what has always been there; it is just now more noticeable due to everyone being billed for gas separately. 

"Your usage changes by the time. We are just in the real heat, and because you are not using as much, your usage fee is lower, but your service charge stays the same because that's what allows the company to still have gas services in the summer months when we are," he explained.

Lewis told WBRZ that Delta is locked into charging the same rates Entergy has charged in regards to gas for the next two years.