The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week issued a final rule that adopts new consensus business standards for interstate natural gas pipelines in a number of areas — capacity-release bidding and scheduling, title transfer tracking at pooling points, imbalance netting and trading, and electronic transactions over the Internet.

The new standards were developed by the Wholesale Gas Quadrant of the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), formerly the Gas Industry Standards Board. Pipelines will have until Aug. 1 to comply with the standards, which will take effect Oct. 1.

The final rule, to be published in 30 days, revises the capacity-release bidding and scheduling standards to give replacement shippers “nomination equality” with pipeline shippers, as required under Order 637. In addition, it will allow for title transfer tracking at pooling points. This “will enhance the liquidity of the natural gas market by providing for accurate accounting of gas purchase and sale transactions, and integrating such transactions into the pipeline scheduling process,” the rule said [RM96-1-020].

It also includes new standards for transmitting statements of allocation and implementing imbalance netting and trading. The final rule removes FERC’s current regulations dealing with pipeline electronic bulletin boards (EBBs), given that all pipelines now are required to conduct electronic transactions over the Internet.

©Copyright 2002 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.