Utility Madness - Gas

Gas is controlled by a blue-colored smart card with a picture of a rising rocket on it. You can pay for gas at the apartment office using a credit card so this was the easiest to charge up on our first day. In our apartment there is an exposed gas pipe in the laundry room that has a metering device on it.
Since it's on the gas pipe, it is unfortunately a battery-powered metering device. I spent a day trying to figure out why it wouldn't turn on or accept the gas card. The apartment office finally sent someone up to put batteries in and transfer the units from the card into the metering device. Hooray, now I can cook using the gas stove! The stove itself still needs a workmen to come out and fix one of the burners but I'll take what I can get.
So, all in all, pretty easy. Gas here is 1.9 RMB/cubic meter. Is that a lot? I have no idea. It's about 24 cents/cubic meter. I think prices in the US are $10/1000 cubic feet. Err... that means...$1/100 cubic feet... there are approximately 3 cubic meters/100 cubic feet so... 33 cents/cubic meter. Since it's approximately the same price as the US, that means that it is incredibly expensive for your average Chinese consumer.