On September 4, 2019, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) published a Lessons Learned report (“Report”) analyzing a March 5, 2019 cybersecurity incident that caused brief communications outages across several states.  NERC also provided guidance on how to avoid the firewall firmware vulnerabilities that made the cybersecurity incident possible.

On August 30, 2019, FERC instituted a section 206 proceeding to require PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) to revise its Amended and Restated Operating Agreement (the “PJM Operating Agreement”) in light of a recent reversal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the “D.C. Circuit”).  In the new section 206 proceeding, FERC is requiring PJM to revise the PJM Operating Agreement to include projects needed solely to address Form No. 715 local planning criteria in PJM’s competitive proposal process, or to show cause why such revisions are not required.  In a concurrent order on remand, FERC also rejected revisions to the PJM Transmission Owner Tariff that had previously been amended to clarify that 100 percent of the costs for projects that are included in the PJM Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (“RTEP”) solely to address individual transmission owner Form No. 715 local planning criteria should be allocated to the transmission owner’s transmission zone.  FERC expects to issue a final order on the section 206 proceeding within 180 days.

On September 10, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (“Third Circuit”) vacated a federal district court order permitting PennEast Pipeline Company (“PennEast”) to exercise eminent domain power under the Natural Gas Act (“NGA”) over property interests owned by the State of New Jersey.  The Third Circuit found that while the NGA delegates the federal government’s eminent domain authority to private gas companies, it does not delegate the federal government’s separate and distinct exemption from state sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment.  After acknowledging concerns that its decision would disrupt the interstate gas pipeline industry, the Third Circuit suggested that in the case of state-owned property, a “work-around” might be for a federal official to file the necessary condemnation actions, and then to transfer the property to the natural gas company.

On September 6, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) dismissed the City of Oberlin, Ohio’s and the Coalition to Reroute Nexus’s (collectively, “Petitioners”) request to vacate FERC’s authorization for Nexus Gas Transmission, LLC (“Nexus”) to: (1) construct and operate an interstate natural gas pipeline through parts of Ohio and Michigan; and (2) use eminent domain to acquire any necessary rights of way to complete the project (see December 18, 2018 edition of the WER).  The D.C. Circuit agreed with Petitioners, however, that the Commission failed to adequately substantiate its finding that it lawfully credited Nexus’s precedent agreements—under which shippers agree to enter into service agreements once the pipeline is built—with foreign shippers serving foreign customers as evidence of market demand for the interstate pipeline.  As a result, the D.C. Circuit remanded this issue to the Commission, without vacatur, for further explanation of the decision.

On August 27, 2019, FERC issued a final rule amending its regulations at 18 C.F.R. § 385.2001(a) to require that all physical filings and submissions to be delivered to FERC, other than those sent via the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”), are to be sent to FERC’s off-site security screening facility in Rockville, Maryland.  FERC’s rule makes no changes to electronic filings submitted through its online system.  The final rule was published in the Federal Register on September 4 and will go into effect 60 days later, or on November 4, 2019.

On August 27, 2019, FERC staff and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) staff (collectively, “Staff”) jointly issued a white paper on Notices of Penalty (“NOP”) for violating Critical Infrastructure Protection (“CIP”) Reliability Standards, which details requirements for Bulk Power System cyber security.  Staff elected to draft the white paper in response to the increase in Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests for the disclosure of non-public information in CIP NOPs, such as the identity of the CIP violator.  The overarching objective of the proposal is to provide increased transparency, while protecting sensitive security information that could jeopardize the Bulk Power System if made public.  If approved, the proposal will not have a retroactive effect on pending matters, or CIP NOPs already filed with the Commission.

On August 27, 2019, FERC affirmed its earlier rejection of PJM Interconnection, L.L.C.’s (“PJM’s”) proposal to, in certain circumstances, exempt incumbent transmission owners from executing a Designated Entity Agreement pursuant to the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (“RTEP”) process set forth in Schedule 6 of its Operating Agreement, but not to exempt other transmission developers from this requirement (“August 27 Order”).  The August 27 Order on rehearing and compliance affirmed FERC’s conclusion in a July 2018 order that incumbent and non-incumbent transmission owners are similarly situated, and that incumbent transmission owners would be given a competitive advantage in PJM’s RTEP process if they were exempted from executing the Designated Entity Agreement.  The August 27 Order also accepted revisions to PJM’s Operating Agreement to provide a 60-day window for an incumbent transmission developer that PJM identified as a Designated Entity in its RTEP process to accept the designation.

On August 22, 2019, FERC dismissed as premature Alternative Transmission Inc.’s (“ATI”) petition for declaratory order (“Petition”) asking FERC to declare that ATI’s alternative transmission facilities and services are subject to FERC’s jurisdiction and that ATI, as the owner and operator of the facilities, will be a public utility under the Federal Power Act (“FPA”).

On August 28, 2019, FERC found on voluntary remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“New York DEC”) waived its authority under section 401 of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) to either issue or deny Constitution Pipeline Company, LLC (“Constitution”) a water quality certificate for a proposed 125-mile pipeline project from that would stretch from Pennsylvania to New York (“Project”).  Based on the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Hoopa Valley Tribe v. FERC (“Hoopa Valley”) (see April 24, 2019 edition of the WER), FERC concluded that Constitution’s agreement with the New York DEC to withdraw and resubmit CWA section 401 certification applications did not restart the one-year statutory deadline for the New York DEC to act on Constitution’s application.

On August 9, 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) ruled that hundreds of millions of dollars of ongoing and future investments by Chelan County Public Utility District (“Chelan PUD”) in the Rock Island Hydroelectric Project qualified as early-action investments under the new section 36(c) of the Federal Power Act (“FPA”).  Accordingly, FERC will consider these significant investments when the Rock Island Project undergoes relicensing of its FERC license prior to the 2028 expiration of the license.