On July 2, 2012, FERC’s Office of Enforcement petitioned the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp. (“JP Morgan”) to show cause why the court should not enforce a subpoena against JP Morgan.  At issue are 25 emails that JP Morgan has refused to produce in an ongoing FERC investigation into potential manipulation of the California and Midwest energy markets.

On July 2, 2012, Duke Energy Corp. (“Duke”) and Progress Energy, Inc. (“Progress”) finalized their merger after receiving regulatory approval from the South Carolina Public Service Commission (“SCPSC”).  The SCPSC’s approval was the final regulatory step needed to complete the merger. 

On June 21, 2012, FERC denied rehearing of its previous order affirming an $80,000 penalty assessed against Turlock Irrigation District (“Turlock”).  Additionally, FERC took the opportunity to clarify that: (1) the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) must consider loss of load and harm to consumers when assessing penalties for violating a mandatory reliability standard; and (2) all self-reports will not automatically warrant a penalty “credit,” particularly when there is another existing obligation to report the violation in question.

On June 28, 2012, FERC granted in part Seminole Electric Cooperative, Inc.’s (“Seminole”) complaint against Florida Power & Light Company (“FPL”), which accused FPL of misapplying the language of Schedule 4 (Energy Imbalance Service) of its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”).  Specifically, FERC granted Seminole’s claim that FPL violated its OATT by misconstruing Schedule 4’s tier thresholds, but rejected Seminole’s claim that FPL incorrectly apportioned penalties within the highest possible tier.

On June 15, 2012, Idaho Wind Partners 1, LLC (“Idaho Wind”) filed at FERC a petition for declaratory order, stating that a Qualifying Facility (“QF”) curtailment policy proposed by Idaho Power Company (“Idaho Power”) at the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (“Idaho PUC”) would violate the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (“PURPA”). 

On June 15, 2012 and June 18, 2012, various parties submitted Requests for Rehearing and/or Clarification of FERC’s May 17, 2012 Order on Rehearing and Clarification of Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation by Transmission Owning and Operating Public Utilities (“Order No. 1000-A”).  The Requests focused on a variety of issues, including: 1) the definition of transmission facilities “selected in the regional transmission plan for purposes of cost allocation,” 2) whether FERC must first prove that existing rates are unjust and unreasonable before “forcing” public utilities to file particular rates, and 3) related Mobile-Sierra contract issues.

On June 14, 2012, GenOn Energy Management, LLC and GenOn Kendall, LLC (collectively, “GenOn”) filed a pleading with FERC arguing that GenOn’s Kendall plant in Massachusetts may be forced to choose between violating the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) or violating the ISO-New England, Inc. (“ISO-NE”) tariff provisions on reliability.  GenOn filed comments on ISO-NE’s forward capacity auction results highlighting what it argues is an ongoing tension between environmental compliance and reliability rules.