The Gas Research Institute (GRI) filed its last annual budget request with FERC on Monday in what has been a seven-year transition period from a regulatory funded organization, which was financially supported through gas pipeline surcharges, to a privately funded organization that is part of the Gas Technology Institute, an industry research and consulting firm.

The organization is requesting a research, development and demonstration (RD&D) program budget for 2004 of $60 million. In addition to the FERC portion of the budget, GRI anticipates receiving about $6.3 million in cofunding from industry and government sources in 2004.

In 1998, the first year of the transition, the FERC portion of GRI’s budget was $164 million. It was $132 million in 1999, $98 million in 2000, $70 million in 2001, and $60 million in 2002, 2003 and now in 2004. In parallel with the FERC program, GRI has been pursuing extensive efforts to diversify revenue sources to complement its programs.

GRI’s application proposes that all funds in 2004 be used to support its core program, which is composed of six projects that are designed to be widely beneficial to gas users and to the entire gas industry. Each of the six projects meets one of the six core program strategic objectives defined in a 1998 settlement agreement approved by the FERC.

The program is designed to help to facilitate a logical, orderly and consumer-beneficial closeout of core program RD&D funding by Dec. 31, 2004, and a final true-up and accounting by July 31, 2005.

GRI said that between January 1998 and December 2002, its research led to the commercialization of 153 new gas industry items. The benefit-to-cost ratio, which was determined by estimating the value of the GRI program to natural gas consumers, was 8-to-1 for the period, GRI said. The ratio was based on an analysis of actual and projected sales of 98 GRI items in commercial use over the five-year period, and the total cost of all GRI activities for the same period.

In April 2000, GRI combined with the Institute of Gas Technology to create a new organization, the Gas Technology Institute (GTI), which is geared to meeting the needs of a more competitive, deregulated energy industry and continuing to provide new technologies with benefits for gas consumers. Both GRI and IGT continue to exist as separate and distinct corporate entities within the overall GTI organization.

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