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On April 7, 2014, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (“PHMSA”) announced the agency proposed an all-time high of more than $9.7 million in civil penalties in 2013 to pipeline operators for violations of safety regulations.  PHMSA’s summary of cases involving civil penalties indicated that of the 266 initiated enforcement matters in 2013, 63 advanced to the civil penalty stage and accounted for the record amount of penalties.

On April 1, 2014, FERC held a technical conference on “2013-14 Winter Operations and Market Performance in Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators.”  The conference explored the impacts of recent cold weather events that led to record highs in electricity and natural gas demand and prices on Regional Transmission Organizations (“RTOs”) and Independent System Operators (“ISOs”), as well as the actions taken in response to those impacts (see February 28, 2014 edition of the WER).

On March 28, 2014, FERC announced it will hold a technical conference to explore opportunities for increasing real-time and day-ahead market efficiency though improved software.  FERC’s announcement stated that the discussion at the June 23-25, 2014 conference will include the research and steps required to implement improvements to market modeling in a variety of areas.

FERC’s new web-based approach for the Electric Quarterly Report (“EQR”) filing process went live on April 1st.  In Order No. 770, FERC revised the EQR filing process, eliminating filing through FERC-distributed software and introducing a web-based approach that allows users to file directly through FERC’s website (see March 10, 2014 edition of the WER).

On March 20, 2014, FERC issued a declaratory order holding that the Montana Public Service Commission’s (“Montana PSC”) implementation of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (“PURPA”) was inconsistent with PURPA and FERC’s regulations.  However, FERC declined to exercise its enforcement authority under PURPA and initiate an enforcement action against the Montana PSC.

On March 21, 2014, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (“CFTC”) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (“Division of Oversight”) issued a letter (“CFTC Letter No. 14-34”) concluding, subject to certain conditions, it would not recommend enforcement action against a party for failure to register as a swap dealer with respect to utility business-related swaps with public power utilities.

On March 20, 2014, FERC issued a pilot project license to Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Washington (“Snohomish PUD”) for the 600-kilowatt Admiralty Intel Pilot Tidal Project in Puget Sound, Washington.  Snohomish PUD proposes to install and operate a hydrokinetic turbine for a 10-year period to investigate whether tidal energy is commercially viable in Puget Sound.  The project will evaluate the performance, cost, and environmental effects of hydrokinetic tidal energy. 

On March 20, 2014, FERC partially clarified and denied rehearing of Order No. 791, which approved the Version 5 Critical Infrastructure Protection (“CIP”) Reliability Standards.  The Commission clarified issues surrounding the implementation of the order as well as the requirement that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (“NERC”) conduct a survey of certain types of cyber assets.