On July 5, 2012, FERC announced the details for its upcoming technical conferences on better coordination between natural gas and electricity markets.  The conferences follow public comments filed earlier this year in Docket No. AD12-12-000 and focus on a variety of issues, including: (1) communications, coordination and information sharing; (2) scheduling; (3) market structures and rules; and (4) reliability concerns. The conferences are organized by region and scheduled for the following dates and locations:

 Central Region, August 6, 2012, St. Louis, Missouri
 Northeast Region, August 20, 2012, Boston, Massachusetts
 Southeast Region, August 23, 2012, Washington, D.C.
 West Region, August 28, 2012, Portland, Oregon
 Mid-Atlantic Region, August 30, 2012, Washington, D.C.

The Commission noted in its July 5th news release that the Central Region includes the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, Inc., Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (“SPP”), and Electric Reliability Council of Texas (“ERCOT”).  The Northeast Region includes the ISO New England Inc. market.  The Southeast Region includes Southern Company, Duke Energy Corp. and Progress Energy, Inc. (now Duke Energy), the Tennessee Valley Authority and other areas south of PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) and east of SPP and ERCOT.  The West Region covers the Western Interconnection, and the Mid-Atlantic Region includes the New York Independent System Operator, Inc. and PJM.

The conferences are open to the public and Commissioners may attend such conferences as schedules permit.  In addition, FERC added a new gas-electric coordination section on its website and created a new conference-specific Twitter feed, #FERC-GEC, to provide additional information about the conference.

A copy of the Commission’s news release is available here.