On November 14, 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) seeking comments on what changes, if any, should be made to its regulations under the natural gas market transparency provisions of section 23 of the Natural Gas Act (NGA). FERC is considering imposition of new reporting obligations for next-day and next-month physical gas transactions. Commenters argued that the proposed reporting requirements would not meaningfully enhance market transparency because FERC-jurisdictional transactions comprise only a small portion of total next-day and next-month physical gas sales. In response to these comments, FERC’s Office of enforcement intends to send the following data requests to certain natural gas marketers:
1. What was [X COMPANY’S] total annual volume of United States natural gas sales in 2012?
2. Is [X COMPANY] an affiliate, as defined by section 2(27) of the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, of an interstate pipeline, an intrastate pipeline, and/or an LDC? If so, provide the name[s] of such affiliated pipeline[s] or LDC[s].
If the response to Question 2 is affirmative, the marketer will be required to provide the following additional information:
3. Of [X COMPANY’S] total 2012 volumes of United States natural gas sales, what volume consisted of sales in interstate commerce, as defined in section 2(7) of the Natural Gas Act?
4. What volume of the sales identified in response to question 3, consisted of sales to end users, such as industrials or electric generators, who would be expected to be purchasing the gas primarily in order to consume it?
5. Of the 2012 volume of [X COMPANY’S] U.S. natural gas sales remaining after excluding the volume sold to end-users identified in response to question 4, what volume consisted of sales from [X COMPANY’S] own or its affiliates’ production of natural gas?
Responses to FERC’s data requests will be due within 15 days. Gas marketers may request confidential treatment of their responses.
FERC’s order concerning these data requests is available here.
