The Natural Gas Council sent a letter to Chairman Bay of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or Commission) on May 15, 2015 regarding prioritizing implementation of the new pipeline scheduling timeline prior to embarking on further scheduling deliberations through the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB).
The Natural Gas Council, in conjunction with other gas industry participants, thanked Chairman Bay, each of the Commissioners, as well as the Commission staff for the hard work and thoughtful consideration expended over the past four years to achieve better coordination between the natural gas and power industries.
While strongly supportive of the new gas scheduling timeline and the anticipated ISOs’ and RTOs’ conforming changes, gas industry operators expect that they will be fully engaged with the substantial amount of work needed to implement these changes reliably over the coming months, particularly to accommodate the compressed timeframes required for the confirmation and scheduling processes. For that reason, the Natural Gas Council is concerned that the Commission’s request in Order No. 809 that the gas and electric industries, through NAESB, explore the potential for faster, computerized intra-day scheduling through increased electronic submissions, will take much-needed industry resources away from efforts to ensure a smooth and effective implementation of the new schedule by April 1, 2016.
The Natural Gas Council stated it hopes that any direction the Commission provides to NAESB will emphasize that implementation of the revised NAESB standards is the priority, and that consideration of the Commission’s request in Order No. 809 to consider improvements to the confirmation process should be taken up only after the two industries have had sufficient time to implement and operate reliably under both the new gas scheduling timeline and changes to RTO/ISO dispatch schedules to conform with the newly-approved gas scheduling timeline.
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