Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Patrick Wood III lists formation of a market oversight office among accomplishments during his approximately 4-year tenure.
But Wood, who plans to leave office on June 30, said developing more effective natural gas price reporting should be among his successor’s top priorities.
“Is daily informal polling really good enough to cultivate confidence in the price of a commodity that has tripled in the last 2 years?” he asked during remarks to the American Gas Association’s Natural Gas Roundtable in Washington, DC.
“Are we reporting the total picture? It can’t stay opaque,” he maintained.
Wood said he would like to see price hubs with independent data, financed by users. “The key operative elements are independent of the industry and customers and neutral as a provider of information,” he said.
“We probably need to move to a new level. It’s too important a commodity,” he said.
Wood said FERC has authorized construction of more than 4,000 miles of interstate gas pipelines, much of it aimed at Rocky Mountain resources, in the last 4 years. The commission also clarified open season rules for the proposed system to bring Alaskan gas to the Lower 48 and is acting on applications to build LNG import terminals, he indicated.
“Future global liquefaction capacity will be substantially in excess of import capacity,” he predicted.
Wood suggested that the natural gas interchangeability issue could become crucial by 2008, but praised the expanded Natural Gas Council’s work in starting to address technical aspects of the problem the past few months (OGJ, May 16, 2005, p. 33). He said this proved that regulators function best when they help bring stakeholders together to develop solutions.
