On June 2, APGA joined a coalition of organizations in filing a petition asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to adopt a rule precluding a natural gas pipeline practice related to the aggregation of bids on non-contiguous segments of pipeline capacity.
Through the joint petition, APGA and the other organizations explained that the pipeline practice of packaging high-value pipeline capacity with non-contiguous, unrelated parcels of unwanted low- or no-value capacity forces shippers to bid an artificially inflated price and enables a pipeline to collect revenue that exceeds the approved maximum tariff rates for the high-value capacity. An APGA member, the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia, provided a perspective from community-owned utilities on this issue by supplementing the petition with an affidavit that outlines instances in which this practice occurred on the pipelines that deliver gas to their service areas. Affidavits from others were also included in the filing.
APGA joined with the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA), American Gas Association (AGA), and the Process Gas Consumers Group (PGCG) in the request for a FERC rulemaking on the practice, representing a broad coalition of natural gas producers, marketers, investor- and publicly-owned utilities and industrial users of natural gas.
A copy of the petition is available
here.
For questions on this article, please contact Renée Lani of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0836 or by email at
rlani@apga.org.