| Date Issued |
Order No. |
Effect of Order |
| 1984 |
Order 380 |
Released local distribution companies (LDCs) from their obligation under existing long-term supply contracts to pay pipeline companies for a certain amount of natural gas ("minimum bill") even if the gas was not received. |
| 1985 |
Order 436 |
Authorized blanket certificates for interstate pipeline companies if they offered open access transportation on a first-come, first-served basis. Order encouraged the unbundling of sales and transportation services. |
| 1987 |
Order 500 |
Modified Order 436 to address company take-or-pay issues. |
| 1988 |
Order 490 |
Allowed abandonment of producers' contract with pipelines ("first-sales contracts") and of contracts between one pipeline and another when the contracts expired or were renegotiated. Allowed pipeline bypass. |
| Order 491 |
Interpreted Section 5 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to require that OCS pipelines offer both firm and interruptible transportation service on a nondiscriminatory, open access basis. |
| 1989 |
Order 512 |
Removed requirement that OCS gas be sold to pipelines under long-term contracts of 15 years. |
| 1990 |
Order 528 |
Capped recovery of take-or-pay costs through volumetric surcharges charged by pipeline companies. |
| 1991 |
Order 537 |
Clarified authority of interstate pipeline companies to move gas "on behalf of" distributors or intrastate pipelines |
| Order 555 |
Attempted to streamline construction approval process by reducing the number of construction projects requiring Section 7 certification authorization under the Natural Gas Act (certificate of "public convenience and necessity"). Exempted facilities used solely for transportation service "on behalf of" and increased cost limits for qualifying blanket authorization projects. Required Section 7 certificate projects to have long-term (10 or more years) contracts for 100% of proposed capacity or be at risk for capacity underutilization. Standardized environmental rules for all projects. |
| Order 555 |
Effective date indefinitely postponed. Industry objected to strict at risk and throughput conditions for projects not meeting the "net benefit" test to existing customers and uncertainty about rate treatment. |
| 1992 |
Order 636 |
Required interstate pipeline companies to provide open access transportation and storage and to separate sales and transportation services completely. Mandated capacity release, electronic bulletin boards, and straight fixed-variable rate design (where all fixed transmission and storage costs are billed through the pipeline's reservation charge). |
| 1994 |
Order 563 |
Consolidated requirements for standardized electronic bulletin boards (EBB) and downloadable files set under Order 636. |
Gathering
Policy
Orders |
Issued several orders clarifying the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) gathering policy. Determined it did not have jurisdiction over gathering affiliates of interstate pipelines. Retained the right to disregard the separate corporate structures if a pipeline company abuses the pipeline/affiliate interrelationship. |
| 1998 |
Order 587 |
Required all interstate pipeline companies to implement fully functional Web sites to replace their current EBB systems by June 1, 2000. Established scheduling priority for intraday nominations. Incorporated most recent standards of Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB). |
| 2000 |
Order 637 |
Allowed capacity holders to trade their rights in secondary market transactions. Suspended price caps for the sale of short term (less than 1 year) released capacity until September 30, 2002. Refined regulations for segmenting capacity to give shippers more flexibility and expanded pipeline reporting requirements on market transactions to increase market transparency. |
| 2002 |
Order 637 |
Decided not to lift the price caps on capacity release transactions after 2-year pilot. |
| 2003 |
Order 2004 |
Established combined standards of conduct for electric public utilities and interstate natural gas pipeline companies. Broadened the definition of an energy affiliate to include both physical and financial transactions by marketing and non-marketing pipeline affiliates. |
| Order 644 |
Addressed standards of ethical behavior applicable to buying and selling natural gas and reporting data. Prohibits actions that are without a legitimate business purpose and could manipulate market prices or conditions, such as "wash" trades and collusion. Gas sellers are not required to report trade data to index publishers, but if they do so, they must provide accurate, complete and factual information. |
| 2004 |
Order 2004 |
On rehearing (April 2004) FERC reaffirmed the need for the rule and clarified that it does not apply to affiliate gatherers, processors, and intrastate pipelines that have interactions with transmission pipelines but do not "engage in" nor are "involved in" transmission transactions. FERC upheld the rule's provisions that allow shared employees, such as officers and directors, to receive non-public operational information as long as they do not act as a conduit for sharing that information. The date for full compliance was extended from June 1, 2004, to September 1, 2004. |
| Order 644 |
Denied rehearing but clarified many details. |
| 2005 |
Order 2005 |
Established regulations governing the conduct of open seasons for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation projects.On rehearing (June 2005) FERC reaffirmed the need for the rule and clarified that it does not apply to affiliate gatherers.
|
| Order 587-S |
Standards for Business Practices of Interstate Natural Gas Pipelines. Denied rehearing but clarified many details.
|
| 2006 |
Order 670 |
Established anti-manipulation rules under the new authority given FERC in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It bars energy market manipulation by any entity in connection with transactions subject to FERC jurisdiction, such as the purchase or sale of electric energy or natural gas or the purchase or sale of interstate transmission or transportation services. This applies to governmental utilities and other market participants, and not just jurisdictional market-based rate sellers or natural gas pipeline companies. It prohibits them from using any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud, or to engage in any act, practice or course of business that operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit. Violators will be subject to penalties.
|
| Order 678 |
Allowed natural gas companies to provide storage and storage-related services at market-based rates even if they are unable to show they lack market power if in the public interest and necessary to encourage storage construction in areas needing storage and where customers are adequately protected.
|
| Order 682 |
Required natural gas companies to report damages caused by natural disasters or terrorist activities that reduce pipeline throughput or storage deliverability. Previous reporting requirements only required reports of service interruptions, which missed cases where supplies were rerouted.
|
| Order 686 |
Expanded the blanket certificate program, raising the dollar limits for automatic and prior notice projects and extending the program to previously excluded facilities, namely mainlines, storage facilities, pipelines transporting a mix of synthetic and natural gas, and pipelines transporting exclusively revaporized liquefied natural gas. Also clarified that a natural gas company can charge different rates for the same service based on the date customers commit to service.
|
| Order 687 |
In accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, established FERC as the lead agency to coordinate the environmental review and all federal authorizations for natural gas infrastructure proposals and to maintain a consolidated federal record for judicial appeal and review. The rule applies to natural gas pipelines, compressor stations, storage fields, liquefied natural gas terminals, and other related facilities.
|
| 2007 |
Order 704 |
Required any buyer or seller of more than 2.2 trillion Btu of physical natural gas each year to report the total volume of sales and purchases, the volumes at fixed prices, and the volumes of transactions that were reportable to price index publishers. The new survey, Form No. 552, must be filed by May 1 of each year, starting in 2009 for transactions delivered in the previous year.
|
| 2008 |
Order 712 |
Removed price caps on short-term (1 year or less) releases of capacity, but kept the rate cap on primary sales of capacity by pipelines. Exempted capacity releases made as part of asset management arrangements (where a party manages gas supply and delivery arrangements for another entity) from the prohibition on tying capacity releases to any extraneous conditions. Clarified that the prohibition on tying does not apply to gas inventory held in storage for releases of firm storage capacity. Also exempted capacity releases made under State-approved retail access programs from the prohibition against tying and from bidding requirement regulations.
|
| Order 704-A |
On rehearing, clarified that reportable volumes on the new survey Form 552 include bilateral, arms-length, fixed-price, and physical transactions between nonaffiliated companies at all trading locations, and also include all volumes that could be reported to an index publisher, even if not reported.
|
| Order 717 |
Revised FERC Standards of Conduct for natural gas and electric transmission providers by eliminating certain provisions of Order 2004, which were difficult to enforce and apply. Order 717 eliminated the corporate separation approach of Order 2004 governing marketing affiliates and instead adopted the employee-functional approach used previously in Order 497 (1988), and Order 889 (1996), the respective standards of conduct for the natural gas and electric industries. Order 717 separately defined marketing functions for electric and gas companies, removed "bids to buy" from the definition of marketing functions to ensure that only sales, not purchases, are included, and clarified the definition of marketing function employees by adding the phrase "day-to-day" to level of involvement.
|
| Order 720 |
Required interstate natural gas pipelines and certain major non-interstate natural gas pipelines to post daily scheduled volume information and design capacity for certain receipt and delivery points and required interstate natural gas pipelines to post information regarding the provision of no-notice service. A major non-interstate pipeline is a pipeline that is not classified as a natural gas company under the Natural Gas Act (NGA) and delivers on average more than 50 billion Btu of gas annually over a 3-year period. These pipelines are now subject to the transparency regulations under NGA section 23, as added by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which asserts FERC jurisdiction over any market participant for the purposes of enhancing market transparency.
|
| Order 712-A |
Reaffirmed Order 712 and clarified many details, including that capacity release transactions that link a release of interstate pipeline capacity to a release of capacity at an open-access liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal are allowed if posting and bidding requirements are met. The rule does not apply to non-open access LNG terminals, which are still subject to capacity tying prohibitions.
|