FERC Commissioner Suedeen G. Kelly’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday was very brief and uneventful.

Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM), ranking minority member Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Kelly are all from New Mexico, so “no one’s going to give her a lot of grief,” said Domenici spokeswoman Marnie Funk. She noted that the Senate panel will probably vote out Kelly’s nomination to the full Senate at a business meeting during the last week of June. Her nomination is not expected to encounter any problems in the Senate.

Kelly, who joined the Commission last November, currently is serving out the remainder of a term that will expire on June 30. In April, the White House nominated her for a full five-year term that would expire on June 30, 2009.

In her testimony before the Senate energy panel, Kelly said FERC “remains concerned that gas supplies are going to be tight in relation to demand” this year. She noted that since last fall the agency has approved 12 natural gas pipeline projects, four gas storage projects and two liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects to help ease the imbalance.

Four of the projects will provide access to additional gas supplies in the Rocky Mountains, the fastest growing supply region in the United States, she told the committee.

On the electric side, Kelly said FERC has taken several steps to increase the reliability of the nation’s interstate transmission grid in the wake of the U.S.-Canadian task force report on last August’s blackout. “The Commission addressed the need to expeditiously modify North American Electric Reliability Council’s (NERC) reliability standards in order to make them clear and enforceable. Priority matters that need to be handled by the NERC standards include vegetation management on transmission rights-of-way, transmission operator training, and adequacy of operator tools.

“NERC is working on coming up with mandatory reliability standards by January 2005. The Commission is very supportive of this effort. FERC and NERC agreed that by June 20, 2004 NERC would undertake audits of the reliability readiness of 20 control areas in the United States. These chosen areas serve 80% of the U.S. electricity load,” she said.

“FERC has also announced that it expects public utilities to comply with reliability standards, stating that it interprets the phrase ‘good utility practice’ that is present in most tariffs for transmission service to include compliance with reliability standards. Thus, violation of good reliability practices will amount to violation of the utility’s FERC tariff, and the Commission will consider taking utility-specific action on a case-by-case basis to address significant reliability matters,” Kelly told Senate lawmakers.

Moreover, FERC “has…ordered all transmission owners to report on the status of their vegetation management practices by June 17th,” she said, adding that the agency will then report to Congress.

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