Regulatory

The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given Horizon Pipeline Co. the green light to place in service its 70-mile pipeline that will transport 380 MMcf/d of natural gas from the Joliet Hub in Illinois near Chicago to the northeastern part of the state near McHenry, IL.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff has given Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line the green light to begin construction of the remaining facilities of its Phase Two MarketLink and Leidy East projects to provide expanded natural gas service to traditional and power generation markets in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff has made headway in narrowing the list of “energy affiliates” that would be subject to the broader standards of conduct that are being considered for natural gas pipeline and electric transmission providers and their sister companies, said an official with a major pipeline group. But she believes the list of potentially affected affiliates still is far too expansive.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week issued a final rule that adopts new consensus business standards for interstate natural gas pipelines in a number of areas — capacity-release bidding and scheduling, title transfer tracking at pooling points, imbalance netting and trading, and electronic transactions over the Internet.

The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied last Thursday the bulk of the energy industry’s requests to limit the definition of “energy affiliate” as it applies in the agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) on standards of conduct governing the relationships between regulated monopolies and their affiliates.

The power industry should look to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, not Congress, to accomplish the restructuring of the electric power market, Dynegy Chairman Chuck Watson told a Washington audience Thursday. “FERC knows how to get things done.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave the go-ahead last Wednesday for Tuscarora Gas Transmission to bifurcate its 2002 Expansion Project into two phases to accommodate the delays with environmental approvals for a planned power plant to be served by the expansion.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week denied a request of U.S. Rep. Robert Filner (D-CA) to re-open the agency’s environmental review of the U.S. leg of the North Baja Pipeline to address the potential cross-border pollution from Mexican power plants that would be served by the natural gas line.

Officials from FirstEnergy’s nuclear operations division told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Wednesday they would submit a detailed plan in two weeks for repair of the corroded Davis-Besse reactor head in Ohio, with a goal of having the 883 MW unit back on line in July.