Despite the literally bone chilling temperatures experienced to freeze-in the New Year, they didn't quite top numbers seen previously. However, as Saskatchewanites huddled over their heating vents and in front of their fireplaces, records were set in other areas.

"What we saw over the week starting on December 24th until this past weekend with our systems, almost every day we had almost near record setting or record setting natural gas usage across the province," shared SaskEnergy's Senior Communications Officer, Casey MacLeod, "We set our previous usage records last winter, and that was 1.33 petajoules. We broke that on the 26th with 1.43 petajoules over 24 hours, then we quickly broke that again on the 29th, with 1.50 petajoules used in a 24 hour period."

To put that in perspective, picture your typical BBQ tank. 1.50 petajoules would be about 3.35 million of those, filled with natural gas, all used within 24 hours.

"Obviously, the extreme cold affects our usage. However, with our growing customer base, we're definitely seeing more and more records being broken. This would be the fifth year in a row that we've broken a natural gas usage records during the winter months," she added.

While there are more residential than industrial customers, the latter tends to take up the majority of the share when it comes to consumption.