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Natural gas production and demand hit new records in 2013, and futures prices suggest the trend may continue this year, FERC staff said last week in their annual State of the Markets review. Natural gas spot prices, which had fallen to record lows in 2012, rose across the U.S. last...

By Ted Caddell The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission set a six-month deadline for the natural gas and electric industries to better align their daily schedules, adding urgency to changes already proposed by RTO and pipeline representatives. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), FERC said Thursday it wants to start...

FERC upheld an earlier ruling that Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) and North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation (NCEMC) shouldn’t have to help pay for $173.4 million in undergrounding for three projects in Virginia that Dominion Resources' Virginia Electric and Power Co. included in its 2010 Annual Transmission Revenue Requirement. Incremental ATRR...

John Podesta Environmentalists’ efforts to dampen the Obama administration’s support for natural gas are not meeting a warm reception. White House adviser John Podesta, former president of the liberal and environmentalist think tank Center for American Progress, told reporters that opposing all fossil fuels “is a completely impractical way of...

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week approved a revised definition of the bulk electric system (BES) that refines the exclusions for radial facilities and local networks. The commission’s order (RD14-2) approved changes drafted by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. in response to FERC and industry concerns over how...

By Rich Heidorn Jr. WASHINGTON ­– An appellate court panel last week grilled attorneys seeking to overturn FERC’s Order 1000, expressing skepticism over challenges to the agency’s jurisdiction and claims that allowing competition in transmission development will harm reliability. The three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was...

A Department of Energy-funded study concludes that PJM has the best alignment of electric and natural gas infrastructure among U.S. regions on the Eastern Interconnection. The draft “baseline assessment” conducted for the Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative analyzed the electric-gas structure for PJM, TVA and four RTOs on nine measures, including...

By Rich Heidorn Jr. PJM’s plan to implement new demand response rules in time for the May capacity auction is in doubt following a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order requiring the RTO to provide more information to support its proposal. The March 6 deficiency notice (ER14-822) shows that commission staff...

PJM told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week that it should reject an attempt by Consolidated Edison Co. to avoid paying for more than half of a $1.2 billion transmission upgrade to address a short circuit problem in the PSE&G transmission zone outside New York City. The project, part...

The Planning Committee voted last week to initiate work to bring PJM into compliance with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Small Generator Interconnection rules. FERC Order 792, issued in November, streamlines interconnection procedures for small generators connecting to transmission at 69 kV and below. (See Rule Set for Small Generators.)...