Appointment

Ken Hendricksand Erin Campbell have been appointed to the four-member Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission by Gov. Matt Mead. Hendricks, a petroleum engineer, recently retired from Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and would replace Tom Fitzsimmons, who has resigned. Campbell, who becomes state geologist on Nov. 21, would join the commission in mid-December, replacing Tom Drean, who is retiring as state geologist.

Amy Myers Jaffe is joining the University of California, Davis, in October as executive director of energy and sustainability in a joint appointment to the Graduate School of Management and Institute of Transportation Studies. Jaffe has spent the past 16 years at Houston’s Rice University, where she served as director of the Energy Forum at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Kenneth Medlock, deputy director of the forum, was named the new director. Jaffe said she was drawn by the California university’s “focus on sustainability and the interdisciplinary research and relationships between transportation and energy, and by the opportunity to work near California’s state capital, which is an international pioneer on environmental and public policy issues.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown has filled the five-member California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) with his third appointment, Mark Ferron, 52, a senior partner at Silicon Valley Social Ventures, and a former investment banker in London with Deutsche Bank’s global markets division (2001-2009). He also worked as an executive with Salomon Brothers and Bank of America earlier in his financial industry career. Ferron hold a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University. He joins CPUC President Michael Peevey, and Commissioners Timothy Alan Simon, Michael Florio and Catherine Sandoval on the CPUC. The latter two were appointed by Brown earlier this year.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has reappointed Philip Jones to a second six-year term on the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC). The appointment requires state Senate confirmation, and would run through Jan. 1, 2017. Gregoire originally named Jones, 57, to the UTC in 2005. Jones is active in the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), serving on the board of directors and the NARUC executive committee as second vice president, along with the international relations and telecommunications committees. Jones also is active on the NARUC Washington (DC) Action Committee and board chair for the National Regulatory Research Institute. Jones was a former senior executive with Cutter & Buck (Europe) BV in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for five years and prior to that was a senior legislative aide to former U.S. Sen. Daniel Evans (R-WA). Jones is a 1977 graduate of Harvard, with honors.

Presidential appointment and Congressional confirmation of the director of the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) “would provide additional oversight and scrutiny of the agency, as well as elevate the status of one of the largest non-tax revenue operations within the federal government,” a taxpayer watchdog group is slated to tell a Congressional subcommittee last week.

Presidential appointment and Congressional confirmation of the director of the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) “would provide additional oversight and scrutiny of the agency, as well as elevate the status of one of the largest non-tax revenue operations within the federal government,” a taxpayer watchdog group is slated to tell a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday.

A veteran telecommunications attorney and former Federal Communications Commission member who is a strong free market advocate, Rachelle Chong, had her appointment to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) take a detour last Wednesday when a state Senate committee held up deciding whether she will be able to serve out the rest of her term. The head of the state legislative body and also committee chairman, Sen. Don Perata, publicly committed to taking a committee vote Wednesday.

Reuben Jeffery III was sworn Monday as the new chairman and a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates commodity futures and options on U.S. exchanges. The appointment came two days after Joseph Kelliher officially became chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the other major D.C. regulatory body charged with oversight of the energy industry (see related story).

FERC Chairman Pat Wood Friday announced the appointment of William J. Cowan as Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge at the Commission. Cowan will assist Chief Administrative Law Judge Curtis Wagner, Jr. with the administrative and managerial duties of the Office of Administrative Law Judges and serve as head of the office in the absence of the chief judge. Cowan joined FERC as an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) in early 1997 until June 2001. From July 1998 to August 2001, he served as Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge. In late 2001 until July 2003, he served as an ALJ for the Department of Labor in Boston, Massachusetts before returning to the Commission as an ALJ in July 2003. Before that he completed 24 years of service with the New York Public Service Commission, where he was General Counsel and Chief ALJ. Cowan received his Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern University’s School of Law in Boston and his undergraduate degree in economics from the same institution.