FERC on Wednesday said 11 major energy companies, several of which had publicly admitted to supplying false data to published indexes on natural gas trades, have satisfactorily shown the agency that they have improved their systems for reporting prices in the future.

In late April, the Commission ordered the offending companies to show they had installed controls to prevent any attempts at price-index manipulation in the future, or that they have exited the wholesale gas marketing and trading business entirely. FERC gave them 45 days to demonstrate they had fixed their internal processes for reporting data to indexes.

The Commission accepted the submissions of all 11 companies, said an agency staff member, who noted that the companies complied with all of the requirements in the April order.

The targeted companies included American Electric Power (AEP), Aquila, Coral Energy Services, CMS Marketing Services & Trading, Dynegy Inc., Duke Energy Trading and Marketing, El Paso Merchant Energy, Mirant Americas Energy Marketing, Reliant Resources, Sempra Energy Trading Corp., and Williams Energy Marketing and Trading [PA03-1 through PA03-11].

The FERC order noted that some investigations into companies’ past price-reporting practices still are ongoing, a FERC staff member said. So while several of the energy companies have denied allegations of manipulation or attempted manipulation of published gas price indexes, “that conclusion could change,” he noted.

Responding to Commissioner questions, the agency staffer said the published price indexes “[have] come a long way” within the past few months, making them less prone to manipulation. Indexes now are reporting trading volumes, the number of trading parties and number of trades — all of which wasn’t available a few months back, he said.

This “gives you a much clearer picture of how much trading is going on and how much reporting of that trading is going on,” the staffer noted. Index publishers also have made it easier for energy companies to report trades to their publications.

Despite the improvements, he said “the conversation is still going [on]” at FERC and within the energy industry about the best model for collecting and compiling gas prices in the future.

Commissioner Nora M. Brownell questioned him about whether “we might be looking at…a short term and then a longer term solution that the marketplace is clearly focused on.” The staff member replied “that’s correct.”

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