State-federal issues in LDC residential unbundling operations
✍ Scribed by Moring, Frederick
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Weight
- 334 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0743-5665
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
State-Federal Issues in LDC Residential Unbundling Operations
he scope of federal versus state government T regulatory power has long been a subject of keen interest to gas distributors anxious to protect their freedom from federal regulation.
Of course, the 1954 Hinshaw exemption (in Section l(c) of the Natural Gas Act [NGAI) declares that intrastate gas distribution facilities and services are exempt from NGA regulation as long as they are subject to state regulation.
Despite this congressional mandate for FERC to leave them alone, the LDCs' freedom from federal regulation was significantly curtailed by Order 636. Both rate and certificate regulation governing LDC capacity-release transactions was introduced in that ruling. This opened a new era of federal-state jurisdictional uncertainty concerning LDC operations. Statefederal issues have come into sharper focus in the past year, as more LDCs have implemented state-approved plans to unbundle services to residential customers.
State-federal issues have come into sharper focus in the past year -. .
A comprehensive update of the issues presented in this post-636 era of dual state-federal regulation of LDC operations was provided on February 25 when the five FERC commissioners convened an all-day conference about "Federal and State Regulation of Natural Gas Services." At this session, FERC heard from numerous state regulators, LDC executives, consumer groups, marketers and others, each with a different stake in the retail unbundling process. My purpose now is to scratch the surface of the discussion at this forum and throw some light on the more important unresolved questions presented there.