While Congress played political football with draft electricrestructuring legislation, natural gas pipelines urged legislatorsto take a page from the history of natural gas deregulation andgive FERC enough authority to effectively oversee the nationalelectric grid.

“One set of rules is certainly more effective and lessburdensome on private enterprise than 50 different sets of rules,”Jerald Halvorsen, president of the Interstate Natural GasAssociation of America (INGAA) said in a letter to Joe Barton,R-TX, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. “Ourpipeline regulation was not restructured because of passage of newlegislation on Capitol Hill. Rather, the Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission, with Orders 436 and 636, used its authority torestructure our industry into the ‘open access’ model that existstoday…..Having one clear set of rules at the national level was acrucial component to implementing these changes — changes whichhave resulted in lower natural gas prices, new services and betterreliability for all classes of natural gas customers.”

INGAA suggested the committee should allow FERC to provide for”transcos” or private transmission companies as well as RegionalTransmission Organizations (RTOs). The pipeline group said itsupports the electric supplier information disclosure section ofthe draft because “we believe consumers will be more likely topurchase electricity from clean resources, such as natural gas, ifthey are better informed about the generation and emission profilesof electricity suppliers.”

The pipelines also strongly supported draft language dealingwith interconnection standards for distributed generation, sayingthey believe on-site generation is “an important trend for thefuture.” And while it is an advocate of repeal of the PublicUtility Holding Company Act, INGAA said it was concerned with newauthority the draft would give to FERC and the states to reviewbooks and records would support “burdensome disclosures andregulatory fishing expeditions.”

Meanwhile, Barton, the subcommittee chairman, reacted topressure to produce a bill from to Chairman Thomas Bliley, R-VA,chairman of the parent Commerce Committee, saying he wasn’t sure hecould get a majority of the subcommittee to vote it out. “Does theesteemed Committee Chairman expect me to deliver a corpse? We wantto deliver a healthy baby to the full Committee, not abarely-breathing, desiccated husk of a bill.”

In his letter to Bliley, Barton said he would do his best to putout a bipartisan bill by the middle of October in time for actionbefore the end of the session Oct. 29.

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