The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (the Commission) issued an order on Thursday, March 19, 2015, refusing to allow the abandonment of certificated working gas capacity when the reason for the request was unrelated to the physical characteristics of the storage facility and unsupported by engineering or geological data.  The applicant had sought the abandonment authorization for the sole purpose of reducing its lease payments, which are largely based on the certificated working gas capacity of the facility.

The order, Tres Palacios Gas Storage LLC, 150 FERC ¶ 61,197 (2015), was issued following an  application by Tres Palacios Gas Storage LLC (Tres Palacios) for authorization to abandon a significant amount of its certificated working gas storage capacity in a salt dome storage facility in Matagorda and Wharton Counties, Texas.  Tres Palacios claimed that abandonment was justified because market conditions were such that it could not sell the capacity at rates that it considered acceptable.

In denying the application, the Commission ruled that Tres Palacios’s request was inconsistent with Commission policy, which requires specific facility parameters for each cavern, such as cushion gas capacity, working gas capacity and minimum pressures, and was inconsistent with Tres Palacios’s certificate authority, which authorizes specific parameters for each cavern.  In addition, the Commission explained that no geological or engineering data was submitted to support the change.  The order reaffirmed that certificated capacity is based on the physical attributes of a facility and that certificated working gas capacity is “unrelated to the amount of working gas capacity the storage company is able to sell.”

Karol Lyn Newman and Jessica Bayles represented the lessor, Underground Services Markham, LLC, in the proceeding before the Commission.




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