FERC Chairman Pat Wood on Wednesday told reporters that the federal agency is on schedule to issue its latest survey of natural gas and power companies before the end of this month to determine if there has been progress made on the reporting of prices to the trade press.

The follow up survey has to “go out by the end of March and it will go out before that time,” Wood said at press briefing following the Commission’s regular agenda meeting.

“I was actually meeting with Bill Hederman and his staff yesterday afternoon on that issue and I’ll probably see a final survey that looks a whole lot crisper and better than the one we sent out in October,” the FERC chairman went on to say. Hederman heads up FERC’s Office of Market Oversight and Investigations.

“I think that one will get a lot of data and it’s again one of those opportunities — and I’ll use it right now — to just say I think it’s real helpful for people that if they’re thinking about reporting their fixed price trade price surveys that they hurry up and do so before they get the questionnaire from us.” FERC would “really like to see a real high participation rate there,” Wood said.

Hederman in October 2003 said that the agency had received a healthy response to the first survey sent out to approximately 300 natural gas and electric wholesale suppliers (see Daily GPI, Oct. 23, 2003). FERC has been collecting information about the companies’ price reporting practices and trying to determine whether they are complying with the standards that were designed by the agency to thwart future abuses.

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