In the almost six years since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act), the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has, in large part, finalized its rulemakings to implement the new comprehensive regulatory framework for swaps. The CFTC’s Dodd-Frank Act rulemakings do impose certain compliance obligations that affect commercial end-users and other unregistered entities — including companies in the energy sector — that transact in CFTC-regulated products to hedge the commercial risks associated with their businesses. Because of the potential impact of any such regulation on the energy industry, the CFTC has continued to meet with market participants from the energy sector and is currently refining existing regulations and interpretations in order to ensure that any such finalized rules align with the CFTC’s market regulation goals without hindering commercial business and development. To this end, the CFTC has stated that it expects to release final position limit rules in 2016. Regarding other relevant rules, the CFTC has further clarified embedded volumetric optionality for forward contracts and proposed to relieve end-users of certain reporting requirements for trade options.

Originally published in Bloomberg BNA's Securities Regulation & Law Report - February 29, 2016.