On November 10, 2015, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) granted a motion for a technical conference and request to postpone the comment deadline (“Motion”) that was filed in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Collection of Connected Entity Data from Regional Transmission Organization and Independent System Operators (“NOPR”) that the FERC issued on September 17, 2015 (see September 21, 2015 edition of the WER). The FERC directed staff to convene a technical conference on December 8, 2015 and postponed the due date for comments on the NOPR until January 22, 2016.

The Motion was filed on October 28, 2015, by the following entities: Macquarie Energy LLC, GE Energy Financial Services, Inc.; EDF Trading North America, LLC; Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc.; Trailstone NA Logistics, LLC; Tensaka Energy, Inc.; BP Energy Company; and Iberdrola Renewables (collectively, the “Movants”). In the Motion, the Movants asserted that a technical conference “would help the Commission carefully consider whether the reporting requirements – as currently drafted – will achieve the desired benefits commensurate with the burden that would be placed on [affected parties], or whether the reporting requirements could be drafted in a manner that eliminates some of the burden while preserving the Commission’s goal of detecting market manipulation.” On October 28, 2015, a consortium of energy-industry trade associations filed comments in support of the Motion.

A copy of the order is available here.