[Federal Register: July 10, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 132)]
[Notices]               
[Page 45713-45714]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr10jy02-57]                         

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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Energy Information Administration

 
Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB 
Review; Comment Request

AGENCY: Energy Information Administration (EIA), Department of Energy 
(DOE).

ACTION: Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB 
Review; Comment Request.

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SUMMARY: The EIA has submitted the energy information collection listed 
at the end of this notice to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 
for review and a three-year extension with revisions under section 
3507(h)(1) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) (44 
U.S.C. 3501 et seq.).

DATES: Comments must be filed by August 9, 2002. If you anticipate that 
you will be submitting comments but find it difficult to do so within 
that period, you should contact the OMB Desk Officer for DOE listed 
below as soon as possible.

ADDRESSES: Send comments to Bryon Allen, OMB Desk Officer for DOE, 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and 
Budget. To ensure receipt of the comments by the due date, submission 
by FAX (202-395-7285) or e-mail (BAllen@omb.eop.gov) is recommended. 
The mailing address is 726 Jackson Place N.W., Washington, DC 20503. 
The OMB DOE Desk Officer may be telephoned at (202) 395-3087. (A copy 
of your comments should also be provided to EIA's Statistics and 
Methods Group at the address below.)

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: A copy of the materials submitted to 
OMB is available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/
form_417/form_417.html. Requests for additional information should be 
directed to Herbert Miller. To ensure timely receipt of any comments 
sent to EIA, submission by FAX (202-287-1705) or e-mail 
(herbert.miller@eia.doe.gov) is recommended. Mr. Miller's mailing 
address is Statistics and Methods Group (EI-70), Forrestal Building, 
U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC 20585-0670. Mr. Miller may be 
contacted by telephone at (202) 287-1711.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This section contains the following 
information about the energy information collection submitted to OMB 
for review: (1) The collection numbers and title; (2) the sponsor 
(i.e., the Department of Energy component); (3) the current OMB docket 
number (if applicable); (4) the type of request (i.e., new, revision, 
extension, or reinstatement); (5) response obligation (i.e., mandatory, 
voluntary, or required to obtain or retain benefits); (6) a description 
of the need for and proposed use of the information; (7) a categorical 
description of the likely respondents; and (8) an estimate of the total 
annual reporting burden (i.e., the estimated number of likely 
respondents times the proposed frequency of response per year times the 
average hours per response).
    1. Form EIA-417, ``Electric Emergency Incident and Disturbance 
Report''
    2. Energy Assessment/Office of Emergency Management
    3. OMB Number 1901-0288
    4. Revision and three-year approval requested--The EIA-417 was 
previously submitted to OMB in March 2002. That request was withdrawn 
in May to allow additional time for consultations and refinement of the 
information collection.
    Changes to the information collection from the earlier request are:
    (a) Who must respond--this section on the form and instructions was 
changed so that electric utilities would file the form if an incident 
occurs. The reporting obligation for the utilities that handle 
reliability authority functions was reduced. All electric utilities, 
including those that operate Control Area Operator functions and 
Reliability Authority (RA) functions, will be required to supply 
information. RA's will not be required to file the number of customers 
lost and amount of power lost when the incidents occur.
    (b) Confidentiality--There will be a pledge of confidentiality for 
all information supplied on Schedule II and any attachments filed with 
Schedule II.
    (c) For the Preliminary Report (Schedule I), reporting of estimates 
and ``unknown at this time'' have been added for many categories.
    (d) For the reporting of 50,000 customers or more lost during an 
outage, it has been clarified that the outage must last longer than an 
hour.
    (e) An option has been granted to permit utilities to file reports 
of suspected malicious or intentional incidents (physical or cyber/
computer/telecom) directly from the divisions in the utilities to the 
Department.
    5. Mandatory
    6. Form EIA-417 collects information on electric emergency 
incidents and disturbances for DOE's use in fulfilling its overall 
national security and other

[[Page 45714]]

energy management responsibilities. The information will also be used 
by DOE for analytical purposes. All electric utilities, including those 
that operate Control Area Operator functions and Reliability Authority 
functions, will be required to supply information when an incident or 
disturbance meets a reporting threshold.
    7. Business or other for-profit; State, local or tribal government
    8. 7,310 hours (3330 respondents x 2.215 hours per response) 
annually. This burden estimate includes time for training personnel on 
the reporting requirements.

    Statutory Authority: Section 3507(h)(1) of the Paperwork 
Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. No. 104-13)(44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq).


    Issued in Washington, DC, July 3, 2002.
Jay H. Casselberry,
Agency Clearance Officer, Statistics and Methods Group, Energy 
Information Administration.
[FR Doc. 02-17285 Filed 7-9-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P