On May 18, 2017, ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”) and the New England Power Pool Participants Committee (together with ISO-NE, the “Filing Parties”) proposed revisions to the ISO-NE/New York Independent System Operator, Inc. (“NYISO”) Coordination Agreement (the “NE/NY Coordination Agreement”) and the term sheet indicating the price of emergency energy sold to Hydro-Quebec Transenergie (“HQTE”) by ISO-NE (the “HQTE EE Pricing Schedule”) to reflect changes that were implemented to ISO-NE’s Market Rule regarding emergency energy purchases and sales.  The NE/NY Coordination Agreement specifies, among other things, the terms and conditions under which a control area will provide energy to the neighboring control area during emergency conditions.  These terms and conditions include the price one control area will charge the other for providing emergency energy. 

On May 9, 2017, the New Jersey Boroughs of Milltown, Park Ridge, and South River (collectively, “New Jersey Boroughs”) filed a Federal Power Act (“FPA”) Section 206 complaint against Public Service Electric & Gas Company (“PSE&G”) seeking to reduce PSE&G’s current base return on equity (“ROE”) of 11.18 percent to a base ROE of no higher than 8.3 percent.  Additionally, the New Jersey Boroughs requested that FERC order refunds and establish the date of the complaint as the refund effective date.

On May 8, 2017, the nation’s Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators (“RTOs/ISOs”) submitted their respective compliance filings to implement the directives from FERC Order No. 831, which revised FERC’s regulations regarding incremental energy offer caps imposed by RTOs/ISOs.

On May 10, 2017, FERC issued notice that FERC staff will convene a technical conference on June 29, 2017 on natural gas index liquidity and transparency.  Specifically, the purpose of the technical conference is to (1) understand the state of liquidity in physical natural gas markets; (2) explore trends in physical gas trading and price reporting and how the use of natural gas indices have evolved over time; (3) obtain industry views on the confidence in natural gas indices and price formation; and (4) consider whether there is a need to improve natural gas market liquidity and price reporting and, if so, how.

President Donald Trump will nominate Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson as FERC Commissioners, the White House announced on Monday.

Chatterjee has been the energy policy adviser to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell since 2012.  Prior to that, Chatterjee worked as a lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.  …

On April 28, 2017, Commissioner Colette Honorable announced that she will not pursue another term as a Commissioner at FERC after her current term expires June 30, 2017.  Commissioner Honorable is serving her first term with the Commission.  After she was appointed by President Obama, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 16, 2014 (see December 19, 2014 edition of the WER).  Prior to joining FERC, Commissioner Honorable was the Chairman of the Arkansas Public Service Commission and also was president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. 

On May 1, 2017, FERC filed a brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) arguing for the dismissal of United Airlines Inc. and UPS Fuel Services Inc’s (together, “Shippers”) petition for review of a 2013 FERC order in which FERC allowed Enterprise TE Products Pipeline Company LLC (“Pipeline”) to discontinue its jet fuel and diesel fuel transportation service to various shipping entities, including Shippers.  Shippers’ petition for review alleged that Pipeline’s termination of this service violated a 2013 settlement agreement (“Settlement Agreement”) requiring Pipeline to provide this service through May 31, 2015.  FERC’s brief argued that the petition should be dismissed for lack of justiciability, or in the alternative, for lack of standing.

On May 1-2, 2017, FERC staff held a technical conference on wholesale energy and capacity market design, focused on markets operated by ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”), New York Independent System Operator, Inc. (“NYISO”), and PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) (collectively, “Eastern RTOs and ISOs”).  The goal of the conference was to explore the balance between FERC’s regulation of these competitive wholesale markets and recent efforts by states to ensure that certain categories of generating resources receive sufficient revenue to continue operating.  Stakeholders from various sectors of the electricity industry attended to express concern that these eastern organized markets require regulatory intervention of some sort—with a regulatory response from FERC unlikely to take place until at least a three-Commissioner quorum is established.

On April 21, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”) held that: (1) FERC did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in ordering the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) and California Power Exchange Corporation (“Cal-PX”) to net sales and purchases over hourly intervals when calculating refunds to entities that participated in the CAISO and Cal-PX markets during the California energy crisis of 2000-2001; and (2) that FERC did act arbitrarily and capriciously in allocating a $5 million refund shortfall only to net buyers instead of all market participants.  The Ninth Circuit opinion is the latest adjudicatory decision in a series of administrative hearings and judicial appeals arising out of the California energy crisis.

On April 24, 2017, PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) submitted an amicus curiae brief in a legal challenge against an Illinois program to provide additional revenue for some of the state’s financially-struggling nuclear energy facilities.  The program allows eligible generators to generate and sell Zero Emission Credits (“ZECs”) and obligates the state’s utilities to buy a certain share of those credits.  In its brief, PJM argued that the program allows uneconomic generators to continue participating in wholesale energy and capacity markets, thereby causing “substantial[] harm” to the markets and other participating generators.