Producers are jumping the gun by asking FERC to step in and decide the “merits” of a controversial complaint that seeks to overhaul the capacity-allocation and scheduling procedures on El Paso Natural Gas, contend East-of-California (EOC) shippers on El Paso.

In separate filings, Indicated Shippers and Phillips Petroleum Co. last month asked the Commission to decide the lingering complaint case based on the technical conferences held so far and/or “preliminary rules” in the case. The EOC shippers last week registered their opposition to the requests, saying the producers essentially are seeking “a merits decision in their favor before all the facts have been presented.”

“Fairness and the need for an adequate record on [El Paso’s] capacity-allocation issues dictate that [evidentiary] hearing procedures are necessary. The record is not ripe for substantive preliminary rulings on any issues, and any procedural order that would selectively address certain issues to the exclusion of equally important and interrelated issues would, in all likelihood, deter rather than expedite” settlement of the “complex capacity-allocation questions” raised by this case, the group of El Paso customers told FERC [RP99- 507].

FERC’s failure to schedule an evidentiary hearing in the complaint case would not only undermine the Natural Gas Act, but would deny El Paso its due process rights, the pipeline’s shippers said.

But Indicated Shippers and Phillips think FERC has had more than enough time to rule on the complaint, which was brought by Amoco Production, Amoco Energy Trading and Burlington Resources Oil & Gas in September 1999. It has been 365 days since the original complaint was filed, and the “situation today is worse from a scheduling perspective than it was on the day the complaint was filed,” Indicated Shippers said in a July petition.

The petition cited the Commission’s duty to issue timely decisions, and noted “reviewing courts have a duty to ‘compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.'” Indicated Shippers faulted FERC’s endless procedures and failure to resolve the case.

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