FERC Commissioner Pat Wood III said last week that while he doesn’t advocate asking Congress to restore the agency’s authority to regulate gathering, he is concerned about problems that offshore producers may be facing in a de-regulated market.

“We’re being asked every ten minutes [by] Congress is there something that we need to do” to give the Commission greater authority over the energy industry. “I don’t want to ask for authority over gathering because I think a general deregulatory approach toward small facilities…generally tends to be a good thing,” he said during last Wednesday’s regular Commission meeting.

Still, “I would welcome any comments [on this issue] from particularly people who are trying to produce offshore,” Wood said, adding that the offshore was “really the gateway for our future natural gas” supply. He noted he wants to hear from “anybody who has major heartburn” with respect to “rate problems, economic-cost issues” in getting gas from the offshore to onshore markets.

“I was a little surprised in [the] eight years that I looked away from this issue to find 36- and 42-inch [pipelines] would somehow be declared gathering,” Wood said. As far as he’s concerned, “anything I can walk through probably [isn’t] gathering.”

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