The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s proposal to eliminate semiannual storage reporting requirements for interstate natural gas pipelines, intrastate gas pipelines that provide interstate services, and Hinshaw pipelines that provide interstate services subject to the Natural Gas Act (NGA) has been met with widespread support.

The Texas Pipeline Association (TPA), which represents the interests of intrastate pipes in Texas, “requests that the Commission act expeditiously to eliminate this requirement. Under the current regulation, the storage report is due within 30 days of the end of each storage injection and withdrawal season. TPA members would like to be relieved of this burden as soon as possible,” TPA said.

As the Commission pointed out in its notice of proposed rulemaking, which was issued in mid-September, “the vast majority of the information required in the semiannual storage reports is now required by the Commission’s regulations promulgated by Orders 735 and 735-A” in 2010, said Cranberry Pipeline Corp., a Houston-based intrastate pipeline (see Daily GPI, Sept. 16)

As a result of those orders, “intrastate pipelines are required to file quarterly reports in electronic format of their transportation and storage transactions, which information is far more detailed than the data required by the semiannual storage reports as set forth in [Section 284 of the NGA],” the pipeline company said.

It noted that intrastate pipelines that perform Section 311 storage services under the Natural Gas Policy Act (NGPA), such as Cranberry, are now submitting data on storage services six times a year (four quarterly reports and two semiannual reports). “It makes perfect sense to delete the semiannual report requirement, given that the information being submitted quarterly is more detailed,” Cranberry said.

The American Gas Association, which represents gas distributors, agreed, saying that the “semiannual storage reporting requirements for Hinshaw pipelines and intrastate pipelines…are largely duplicative of the quarterly reporting requirements under Order 735.”

FERC adopted the existing semiannual storage reporting requirements for both interstate and intrastate pipelines in 1992, and since then it has added other reporting requirements for both sets of pipelines, which mandate that they post much the same information that is included in the semiannual storage reports.

For example, in May 2010 the Commission issued Order 735 requiring pipelines subject to Section 311 of the NGPA and Hinshaw pipelines to report more transportation and storage transaction data than they previously did and to do so four times annually (see Daily GPI, May 21, 2010).

Section 311 intrastate pipelines can perform interstate service without becoming subject to the Commission’s NGA jurisdiction. A pipeline is a Hinshaw pipeline if it receives natural gas at or within its state boundaries and the gas is entirely consumed within that state.

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