While some other Indiana utilities are telling customers on budget plans that monthly bills will be cut, NIPSCO officials said Tuesday is too early to say if their budget customers will get similar breaks.

Indiana utilities Vectren and Citizens Gas this week told their budget plan customers to expect breaks on bills because of the dramatic fall in the price of natural gas since the summer.

Vectren did a special mid-year adjustment for its 120,000 budget customers because the utility noticed many were building up large credit balances, Vectren spokeswoman Chase Kelley said.

"In June, natural gas prices were forecast to be 40 (percent) to 50 percent higher," Kelley said. "Luckily, that forecast didn't come true."

Vectren budget customers will see monthly bills anywhere from 5 percent to 30 percent lower. At Citizens, reductions for budget customers will average 20 percent.

NIPSCO is doing its annual mid-year adjustment in budget customers' bills this month, spokesman Nick Meyer said. But the utility has not yet calculated how customer bills overall will be affected, Meyer said.

NIPSCO has 712,000 natural gas customers, of which 204,000 are enrolled in budget plans.

In Illinois, NICOR spokeswoman Anette Martinez also offered no assessment Tuesday of how much the company's 400,000 budget customers' bills will be cut by falling gas prices.

Those who had budget amounts set when gas prices peaked should see their bills cut, she said.

The steady fall in natural gas prices since summer doesn't mean people who heat their homes with natural gas can breathe easy just yet.

Wholesale natural gas prices are still on a par with last winter. Most utilities are sticking to autumn forecasts that predicted customer home heating bills would be 10 percent to 20 percent higher this winter as compared to last.

NIPSCO has nicked just 3 percent off its October forecast, which means a typical customer will spend about $950 heating his or her home this winter as compared to $756 last year.

Natural gas prices started to trend sharply higher after last winter and by summer reached historic highs of more than $1 per therm in June and July, when many utilities were setting budget plan payments for customers. Prices since have fallen about 50 percent.

Budget plans break up a natural gas customer's bill into 12 equal monthly payments, buffering the customer from ups and downs.

Meyer also pointed out many NIPSCO customers get both electric and natural gas from NIPSCO. That means a budget customer's monthly bill is made up of both gas and electric charges.

Vectren and Citizens deliver strictly natural gas.