FERC Thursday proposed eliminating the semi-annual storage reporting requirements for interstate natural gas pipelines, intrastate pipelines that provide interstate services, and Hinshaw pipelines that provide interstate services subject to the Natural Gas Act (NGA), saying it finds that the reports are “largely duplicative with other reporting requirements.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s notice of proposed rulemaking is the result of a 2010 notice of inquiry to examine whether and how the semi-annual storage reports required of both interstate and intrastate pipelines should be modified. Commission regulations require interstate, intrastate and Hinshaw pipelines to file semi-annual storage reports at the end of each storage injection and withdrawal season.

FERC adopted the existing semi-annual storage reporting requirements for both interstate and intrastate pipelines in 1992, and since then it said it has added other reporting requirements for both sets of pipelines, which mandate that they post much the same information as is included in the semi-annual storage reports.

For example, in May 2010 the Commission issued Order 735 requiring pipelines subject to Section 311 of the Natural Gas Policy Act and Hinshaw pipelines to report more transportation and storage transaction data than they previously did and to do so four times annually (see Daily GPI, May 21, 2010).

“The…quarterly reports require Section 311 and Hinshaw pipelines to report the same types of information about firm and interruptible storage transactions as is contained in their semi-annual storage reports,” the NOPR said [RM11-4].

Section 311 intrastate pipelines can perform interstate service without becoming subject to the Commission’s NGA jurisdiction. A pipeline is a Hinshaw pipeline if it receives natural gas at or within its state boundaries and the gas is entirely consumed within that state.

Several natural gas trade associations — American Gas Association, Natural Gas Supply Association and the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America — have called on FERC to eliminate duplicative storage reporting requirements.

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