William Hederman, chief of FERC’s Office of Market Oversight and Investigations (OMOI), on Tuesday lobbied state utility regulators to encourage power and gas companies falling under their jurisdiction to respond to a survey FERC will release this month examining if there has been progress made on the reporting of energy prices to the trade press.

“I would ask you to urge companies that are subject to your jurisdiction to cooperate in that survey and LDCs would be among the companies to ask to respond,” Hederman said in an appearance before the winter committee meetings of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

This latest survey of market participants follows on the heels of one issued last year by the Commission. At the NARUC conference, Hederman said that FERC received “a lot of essay-type answers,” while the latest survey will be “much more focused and looking for specifics in terms of numbers…”

Hederman noted that the results of the first survey were originally expected to be released in an open Commission meeting, “but there was just so [many] essay-type answers that there wasn’t a way to provide that in a meeting format” that was useful. In contrast, the results from the latest survey “should be made available to the public,” Hederman said.

Carl Wood, a commissioner with the California Public Utilities Commission, asked Hederman whether the results will be aggregated data as opposed to the actual responses of parties filing responses to the survey.

“I think that’s something that is still open to discussion with the Commission,” Hederman responded. “If you think that would helpful, let our Commissioners know that.”

Hederman also said that there have been “a lot of advances by the trade press in terms of the index developers. They put new procedures in place shortly after” a policy statement was issued by FERC in July 2003 on natural gas and electric price indices (PL03-3).

“The auditing is coming into place. They’re working much more frequently with the back offices for reporting,” he went on to say.

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