The four gas trade associations are seriously considering askingFERC this week to extend by 74 days the deadline for industrycomments on the major notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) andnotice of inquiry (NOI) that were issued in July.

“I would say that there’s a 70% probability” that the tradegroups will make a joint request to the Commission “towards the endof the week,” said a regulatory official with one of theassociations, who requested anonymity.The request, if accepted byFERC, would push back the comment deadline from Nov. 9th to Jan.22nd.

“We’re buried. The Commission basically laid on us…with theNOPR and the NOI a reconsideration of the entire regulatorystructure without giving us very much detail,” he said inexplaining the need for the extension. The NOPR addressedregulation of short-term transportation services. Specifically, itproposed the removal of existing price caps on short-term (lessthan one year) firm, interruptible and capacity-releasetransactions in return for pipelines conducting auctions of thatcapacity. The proposal has come under intense fire from industrybecause FERC provided scant detail about how the auctions would becarried out. The NOI, on the other hand, focused on the regulationof long-term transportation services.

“The auction [as outlined in the NOPR} is all ‘if then.’ If youdo this, then you should do something else that way. If you do itthis way, then you got to do the same thing differently. It’sdriving people up the wall,” the trade group source noted. “And thefact the auction was totally unexpected, I think, by all theelements of the industry” has added to the confusion.

Even the Commission staff is having trouble with the auctionproposal. “…[W]hen we had some meetings at the beginning of thismonth with Kevin Madden [director of the Office of PipelineRegulation] and his people about auctions, one of the interestingthings that happened…was they started arguing with each other. SoI don’t think the staff, and I can’t say anything about thecommissioners, even has a clear vision of where this should betaken.”

He doesn’t think FERC will take issue with industry’s requestfor a delay. “Everybody’s been telling us, at least the FERC staffhas been telling us, that the Commission’s not going to move onthis quickly,” the source noted, referring to both the NOPR andNOI. “I get the sense…that there’s no rush to judgment.”

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