Commitment & Contingencies (Disclosure)	3 Months Ended
Jul. 31, 2013
Commitments And Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract]
Commitments And Contingencies Disclosure Text Block	9. Commitments and Contingent Liabilities Long-term Contracts We routinely enter into long-term gas supply commodity and capacity commitments and other agreements that commit future cash flows to acquire services we need in our business. These commitments include pipeline and storage capacity contracts and gas supply contracts to provide service to our customers and telecommunication and information technology contracts and other purchase obligations. Costs arising from the gas supply commodity and capacity commitments, while significant, are pass-through costs to our customers and are generally fully recoverable through our PGA procedures and prudence reviews in North Carolina and South Carolina and under the TIP in Tennessee. The time periods for pipeline and storage capacity contracts are up to twenty-two years. The time periods for gas supply contracts are up to fifteen months. The time periods for the telecommunications and technology outsourcing contracts, maintenance fees for hardware and software applications, usage fees, local and long-distance costs and wireless service are up to three years. Other purchase obligations consist primarily of commitments for pipeline products, vehicles, equipment and contractors. Certain storage and pipeline capacity contracts require the payment of demand charges that are based on rates approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in order to maintain our right to access the natural gas storage or the pipeline capacity on a firm basis during the contract term. The demand charges that are incurred in each period are recognized in the Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Income as part of gas purchases and included in “Cost of Gas. Leases We lease certain buildings, land and equipment for use in our operations under noncancelable operating leases. We account for these leases by recognizing the future minimum lease payments as expense on a straight-line basis over the respective minimum lease terms under current accounting guidance. Legal We have only routine litigation in the normal course of business. We do not expect any of these routine litigation matters to have a material effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows. Letters of Credit We use letters of credit to guarantee claims from self-insurance under our general and automobile liability policies. We had $2.1 million in letters of credit that were issued and outstanding as of July 31, 2013. Additional information concerning letters of credit is included in Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements in this Form 10-Q. Environmental Matters Our three regulatory commissions have authorized us to utilize deferral accounting in connection with environmental costs. Accordingly, we have established regulatory assets for actual environmental costs incurred and for estimated environmental liabilities recorded. We are responsible for any third-party claims for personal injury, death, property damage and diminution of property value or natural resources regarding nine manufactured gas plant (MGP) sites that were a part of a 1997 settlement with a third party and several MGP sites retained by Progress Energy, Inc., now a subsidiary of Duke Energy Corporation, in connection with our 2003 acquisition of North Carolina Natural Gas Corporation. We know of no such pending or threatened claims. There are four other MGP sites located in Hickory and Reidsville, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee and Anderson, South Carolina that we have owned, leased or operated and for which we have an investigation and remediation liability. In fiscal year 2012, we performed soil remediation work at our Reidsville site. In July 2012, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) approved our proposed groundwater investigation work plan, which included installing five monitoring wells in September 2012. The NCDENR is no longer requiring the groundwater remedial action plan. We will be filing land use restrictions on the property with the NCDENR in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2013. We have incurred $.6 million of remediation costs at the Reidsville site through July 31, 2013. As part of a voluntary agreement with the NCDENR, we conducted and completed soil remediation for the Hickory, North Carolina MGP site in 2010. A Phase II groundwater investigation was conducted in 2011. A groundwater remedial action plan was submitted and approved by the NCDENR in 2012. We continue to conduct quarterly groundwater monitoring at this site in accordance with our site remediation plan. We will be filing land use restrictions on the property with the NCDENR in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2013. We have incurred $1.5 million of remediation costs at this site through July 31, 2013. During 2008, we became aware of and began investigating soil and groundwater molecular sieve contamination concerns at our Huntersville LNG facility. The molecular sieve and the related contaminated soil were removed and properly disposed, and in June 2010, we received a determination letter from the NCDENR that no further soil remediation would be required at the site for this issue. In September 2011, we received a letter from the NCDENR indicating their desire to enter into an Administrative Consent Order (ACO) addressing the remaining groundwater issues at the site. In April 2012, we entered into a no admit/no deny ACO that imposed a fine of $40,000, unpaid annual fees totaling $18,000 and $1,860 for investigative and administrative costs. As part of the ACO, we were required to develop a site assessment plan to determine the extent of the groundwater contamination related to the sieve burial, a groundwater remediation strategy and a groundwater and surface water site-wide monitoring program. A site assessment plan was accepted by the NCDENR, and we began groundwater sampling in July 2012. We performed an initial round of sampling in our first quarter, which was inconclusive as to migration, and thus additional groundwater monitoring wells were installed during our second quarter to aid in determining the extent of the groundwater contamination. The groundwater sampling results will be submitted to the NCDENR, and based on their response, we will be required to submit additional plan(s) to remediate and/or monitor the groundwater. The Huntersville LNG facility was originally coated with lead-based paint. To avoid lead-based paint exposure, removal of lead-based paint from the site was initiated in spring 2010. The last phase of the lead-based paint removal began in July 2012 on the LNG tank, and the remediation of rafters in a nearby building will begin in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2013 with completion anticipated for both projects by the end of fiscal 2014. We have incurred $4.6 million of remediation costs through July 31, 2013 for all issues at the Huntersville LNG plant site. Once the lead-based paint is removed at our Huntersville LNG facility, we expect there will be no potential environmental or employee exposures. We have transitioned away from owning and maintaining our own petroleum underground storage tanks (USTs) with the exception of our Charlotte, North Carolina resource center which continues to operate two USTs. For all matters discussed above, as of July 31, 2013, our estimated undiscounted environmental liability totaled $1.6 million and consisted of $1.1 million for the MGP sites for which we retain remediation responsibility, $.1 million for the LNG facilities, $.1 million for the groundwater remediation at the Huntersville LNG site and $.3 million for the USTs not yet remediated. The costs we reasonably expect to incur are estimated using assumptions based on actual costs incurred, the timing of future payments and inflation factors, among others. As of July 31, 2013, our regulatory assets for unamortized environmental costs in our three-state territory totaled $10.1 million. We received approval from the TRA to recover $2 million of our deferred Tennessee environmental costs over an eight-year period beginning March 2012, pursuant to the general rate case proceeding in Tennessee. We will seek recovery of the remaining Tennessee balance in future rate proceedings. For further information on regulatory matters, see Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements in this Form 10-Q. Further evaluation of the MGP, LNG and UST sites and removal of lead-based paint at our LNG site could significantly affect recorded amounts; however, we believe that the ultimate resolution of these matters will not have a material effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows. Additional information concerning commitments and contingencies is set forth in Note 8 to the consolidated financial statements of our Form 10-K for the year ended October 31, 2012.

Commitment & Contingencies (Disclosure)

3 Months Ended

Jul. 31, 2013

Commitments And Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract]

Commitments And Contingencies Disclosure Text Block

9. Commitments and Contingent Liabilities

Long-term Contracts

We routinely enter into long-term gas supply commodity and capacity commitments and other agreements that commit future cash flows to acquire services we need in our business. These commitments include pipeline and storage capacity contracts and gas supply contracts to provide service to our customers and telecommunication and information technology contracts and other purchase obligations. Costs arising from the gas supply commodity and capacity commitments, while significant, are pass-through costs to our customers and are generally fully recoverable through our PGA procedures and prudence reviews in North Carolina and South Carolina and under the TIP in Tennessee. The time periods for pipeline and storage capacity contracts are up to twenty-two years. The time periods for gas supply contracts are up to fifteen months. The time periods for the telecommunications and technology outsourcing contracts, maintenance fees for hardware and software applications, usage fees, local and long-distance costs and wireless service are up to three years. Other purchase obligations consist primarily of commitments for pipeline products, vehicles, equipment and contractors.

Certain storage and pipeline capacity contracts require the payment of demand charges that are based on rates approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in order to maintain our right to access the natural gas storage or the pipeline capacity on a firm basis during the contract term. The demand charges that are incurred in each period are recognized in the Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Income as part of gas purchases and included in “Cost of Gas.

Leases

We lease certain buildings, land and equipment for use in our operations under noncancelable operating leases. We account for these leases by recognizing the future minimum lease payments as expense on a straight-line basis over the respective minimum lease terms under current accounting guidance.

Legal

We have only routine litigation in the normal course of business. We do not expect any of these routine litigation matters to have a material effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows.

Letters of Credit

We use letters of credit to guarantee claims from self-insurance under our general and automobile liability policies. We had $2.1 million in letters of credit that were issued and outstanding as of July 31, 2013. Additional information concerning letters of credit is included in Note 5 to the consolidated financial statements in this Form 10-Q.

Environmental Matters

Our three regulatory commissions have authorized us to utilize deferral accounting in connection with environmental costs. Accordingly, we have established regulatory assets for actual environmental costs incurred and for estimated environmental liabilities recorded.

We are responsible for any third-party claims for personal injury, death, property damage and diminution of property value or natural resources regarding nine manufactured gas plant (MGP) sites that were a part of a 1997 settlement with a third party and several MGP sites retained by Progress Energy, Inc., now a subsidiary of Duke Energy Corporation, in connection with our 2003 acquisition of North Carolina Natural Gas Corporation. We know of no such pending or threatened claims.

There are four other MGP sites located in Hickory and Reidsville, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee and Anderson, South Carolina that we have owned, leased or operated and for which we have an investigation and remediation liability. In fiscal year 2012, we performed soil remediation work at our Reidsville site. In July 2012, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) approved our proposed groundwater investigation work plan, which included installing five monitoring wells in September 2012. The NCDENR is no longer requiring the groundwater remedial action plan. We will be filing land use restrictions on the property with the NCDENR in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2013. We have incurred $.6 million of remediation costs at the Reidsville site through July 31, 2013.

As part of a voluntary agreement with the NCDENR, we conducted and completed soil remediation for the Hickory, North Carolina MGP site in 2010. A Phase II groundwater investigation was conducted in 2011. A groundwater remedial action plan was submitted and approved by the NCDENR in 2012. We continue to conduct quarterly groundwater monitoring at this site in accordance with our site remediation plan. We will be filing land use restrictions on the property with the NCDENR in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2013. We have incurred $1.5 million of remediation costs at this site through July 31, 2013.

During 2008, we became aware of and began investigating soil and groundwater molecular sieve contamination concerns at our Huntersville LNG facility. The molecular sieve and the related contaminated soil were removed and properly disposed, and in June 2010, we received a determination letter from the NCDENR that no further soil remediation would be required at the site for this issue. In September 2011, we received a letter from the NCDENR indicating their desire to enter into an Administrative Consent Order (ACO) addressing the remaining groundwater issues at the site. In April 2012, we entered into a no admit/no deny ACO that imposed a fine of $40,000, unpaid annual fees totaling $18,000 and $1,860 for investigative and administrative costs. As part of the ACO, we were required to develop a site assessment plan to determine the extent of the groundwater contamination related to the sieve burial, a groundwater remediation strategy and a groundwater and surface water site-wide monitoring program. A site assessment plan was accepted by the NCDENR, and we began groundwater sampling in July 2012. We performed an initial round of sampling in our first quarter, which was inconclusive as to migration, and thus additional groundwater monitoring wells were installed during our second quarter to aid in determining the extent of the groundwater contamination. The groundwater sampling results will be submitted to the NCDENR, and based on their response, we will be required to submit additional plan(s) to remediate and/or monitor the groundwater.

The Huntersville LNG facility was originally coated with lead-based paint. To avoid lead-based paint exposure, removal of lead-based paint from the site was initiated in spring 2010. The last phase of the lead-based paint removal began in July 2012 on the LNG tank, and the remediation of rafters in a nearby building will begin in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2013 with completion anticipated for both projects by the end of fiscal 2014. We have incurred $4.6 million of remediation costs through July 31, 2013 for all issues at the Huntersville LNG plant site. Once the lead-based paint is removed at our Huntersville LNG facility, we expect there will be no potential environmental or employee exposures.

We have transitioned away from owning and maintaining our own petroleum underground storage tanks (USTs) with the exception of our Charlotte, North Carolina resource center which continues to operate two USTs.

For all matters discussed above, as of July 31, 2013, our estimated undiscounted environmental liability totaled $1.6 million and consisted of $1.1 million for the MGP sites for which we retain remediation responsibility, $.1 million for the LNG facilities, $.1 million for the groundwater remediation at the Huntersville LNG site and $.3 million for the USTs not yet remediated. The costs we reasonably expect to incur are estimated using assumptions based on actual costs incurred, the timing of future payments and inflation factors, among others.

As of July 31, 2013, our regulatory assets for unamortized environmental costs in our three-state territory totaled $10.1 million. We received approval from the TRA to recover $2 million of our deferred Tennessee environmental costs over an eight-year period beginning March 2012, pursuant to the general rate case proceeding in Tennessee. We will seek recovery of the remaining Tennessee balance in future rate proceedings. For further information on regulatory matters, see Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements in this Form 10-Q.

Further evaluation of the MGP, LNG and UST sites and removal of lead-based paint at our LNG site could significantly affect recorded amounts; however, we believe that the ultimate resolution of these matters will not have a material effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows.

Additional information concerning commitments and contingencies is set forth in Note 8 to the consolidated financial statements of our Form 10-K for the year ended October 31, 2012.

- Definition

The entire disclosure for commitments and contingencies.

+ References+ Details