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On January 5, 2015, Colette Honorable was sworn in as a FERC Commissioner.  Commissioner Honorable’s nomination was approved by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on December 11, 2014 (see December 15, 2014 edition of the WER), and confirmed by the Senate on December 16, 2014 (see December 22, 2014 edition of the WER).

On December 30, 2014, FERC approved four separate Stipulation and Consent Agreements (“Agreements”) between its Office of Enforcement (“Enforcement”) and subsidiaries of Twin Cities Power Holdings – Twin Cities Power-Canada, Ltd., Twin Cities Energy, LLC, and Twin Cities Power, LLC (collectively, “Twin Cities”) – as well as traders Jason Vaccaro, Allan Cho, and Gaurav Sharma (collectively, “Traders”) that resolve allegations of market manipulation in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (“MISO”) from January 2010 through January 2011.

On December 18, 2014, FERC granted a Petition for Declaratory Order filed by the Public Service Company of Colorado (“PSCo”) which requested certain clarifications regarding the application of FERC’s prior approval jurisdiction under section 203 of the Federal Power Act (“FPA”) in the context of the assertion of eminent domain by a political subdivision of a state over the transmission assets of a public utility.  In granting the Petition, FERC clarified that transfers by condemnation, regardless of the fact that they are involuntary, are appropriately within the domain of FERC’s 203 prior approval authority.

On December 18, 2014, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) proposing modifications to Part 46 of its regulations regarding the reporting of a utility’s twenty largest purchasers.  The NOPR proposes to eliminate the need to file FERC-566 – an annual report that lists the reporting utility’s twenty largest purchasers – for certain public utilities.  In doing so, FERC stated that the NOPR would reduce the regulatory burden of filings while enhancing the quality of information collected.

On December 9, 2014, FERC announced that it would hold a series of technical conferences to discuss what implications are involved with a variety of compliance approaches used to satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan rule.  The technical conferences will begin on February 19, 2015 and generally focus on issues related to electric reliability, wholesale electric markets and operations, and energy infrastructure.