On October 15, 2014, the Commission granted Indianapolis Power & Light Company’s (“IPL”) request for a limited, one-time waiver of certain provisions of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s (“MISO”) Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) in connection with IPL’s retirement of Eagle Valley coal units 3-6 (“Eagle Valley”) to comply with the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (“MATS”).

On October 21, 2014, FERC Staff released two reports entitled Shortage Pricing in RTO and ISO Markets, and Energy Offer Mitigation in RTO and ISO Markets.  The reports are intended to spur discussion at FERC’s October 28, 2014 workshop on scarcity and shortage pricing, offer mitigation, and offer caps in Regional Transmission Organizations (“RTOs”) and Independent System Operators (“ISOs”).

On October 16, 2014 FERC issued an order accepting Bonneville Power Administration’s (“BPA”) revised Oversupply Management Protocol (“OMP”) and OS-14 Oversupply Rate (“OS-14 Rate”) as a compliance filing under FPA Section 211A standards.  The Commission also issued an order approving the OS-14 rate under BPA’s Northwest Power Act rate standards.  In making the approval, FERC stated that its acceptance of the BPA’s OMP remains an interim solution and that the Revised OMP expires on September 30, 2015.  If BPA desired to extend the use of OMP beyond that date, it will be required to file a request to do so with FERC, explaining why the continued use of OMP is justified.  FERC encouraged BPA to continue to work toward a “mutually agreeable long-term solution to manage oversupply conditions rather than continuing to rely on involuntary curtailment.”

On September 29, 2014, FERC authorized Dominion Cove Point LNG, LP (“Dominion Cove Point”) to build and operate its proposed Cove Point Liquefaction Project, which would allow Dominion Cove Point to export up to approximately 5.75 million metric tons of gas each year from its LNG terminal facilities located in Calvert County, Maryland.  According to Dominion Cove Point, the company has already accepted FERC’s order, and has indicated that it intends to complete construction of the project so that the facilities can start exporting LNG in June of 2017. 

On September 19, 2014, FERC, in response to a petition for declaratory order, disclaimed jurisdiction under both section 3 and section 7 of the Natural Gas Act (“NGA”) over Emera CNG, LLC’s (“Emera”) construction and operation of compressed natural gas (“CNG”) facilities that will be used to send CNG to the Bahamas via ocean-going tankers.  In reaching its decision, FERC noted that Emera’s proposed facilities would not directly load the CNG onto ships, but would rather compress natural gas at a location where the CNG would first be loaded onto trucks, and then be transported a quarter mile by those trucks to ocean-going tankers.