US FERC to be able to continue operating for two weeks after shutdown starts

As the federal government braced for a widely anticipated shutdown at midnight EDT Friday (0400 GMT Saturday), the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission apparently will be able to continue operating for at least another two weeks, an agency spokesman said Thursday.

Agencies, including FERC, have been busy this week formulating plans for continuing to provide at least some level of essential service during a shutdown.

The shutdown looms because Congress has failed to approve a full budget for fiscal 2011. Fiscal 2010 ended last October, but lawmakers passed a series of temporary, short-term funding bills to keep the government operating. The current continuing resolution (CR) is set to expire midnight EDT Friday.

During a Wednesday briefing, FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff indicated that the agency was working on a staffing plan that would concentrate limited resources on oversight of reliability and market monitoring.

FERC officials were also in talks with the Office of Management and Budget about a more detailed contingency plan, he added.

Those talks apparently produced an interpretation that will allow the commission to use "past year budget authorization" to continue full operation until April 22, said commission spokesman Craig Cano.

Assuming Congress does not act on the budget in time to avert expiration of the CR, FERC would "no longer have current year budget authority," he said.

But it would be able to tap some $11.7 million in past year authorization, and intends to "use it to continue operating," said Cano.

FERC is somewhat unique among federal agencies in that it fully covers its expenses through the collection of filing fees and annual charges levied on the regulated industries.

The revenue from the charges and fees is deposited with the Department of the Treasury to offset the commission's appropriations, resulting in no net appropriations.

In some years, FERC collects more than its operating budget, resulting in excess, unused budget authorization.

--Chris Newkumet, chris_newkumet@platts.com

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