A small privately held gas utility serving about 35,000 New Mexico customers — roughly 13,300 of them in Doña Ana County outside the Las Cruces city system.
Zia is the small private utility most Doña Ana County residents outside city limits are on without ever having chosen it. It's not owned by a fund or a public company you can look up on a stock ticker — it's simply privately held, which makes the NMPRC docket essentially the only public window into its finances.
Its defining recent episode was the February 2021 winter storm: Zia asked the PRC for an emergency rate increase to recover a spike in gas costs, a roughly 24% jump for Doña Ana County customers — from about $39.62 to $48.94 a month on an average bill — the same storm-cost mechanics that hit gas customers across Texas and the Southwest.
Zia applied to the NMPRC for emergency authorization to raise rates and recover February 2021 storm gas costs — about 24% more per month for Doña Ana County customers under the proposal. Storm-cost recovery riders like this are worth watching on any gas bill in the region.
Zia publishes its live rate tables directly — the October 2025 tables are the current reference for what each county's customers pay per therm.
Utility Watch is built on the same platform as this market’s archived public meetings — search the record for every time “Zia Natural Gas” came up in council chambers.
🔎 Search the meeting archive for “Zia Natural Gas”