U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Requires Interstate Natural Gas Pipelines to Recalculate Rates

FERC permits pipelines and public utilities to recover their actual or potential tax expenses in their regulated rates. The 2017 Tax Act reduces the corporate tax rate to 21 percent and allows certain investments to receive bonus depreciation treatment. FERC asked each pipeline to 1) explain how the 2017 Tax Act impacts its proposed project cost of service and the resulting initial recourse rate proposal; 2) provide an adjusted cost of service and recalculated initial incremental recourse rates; and 3) provide all supporting work papers and formulas.²

Despite these data requests, it is unclear whether FERC will take industrywide action regarding tax recovery in pipelines’ existing rates. On Jan. 9, in response to the 2017 Tax Act, consumer advocates and attorneys general of 15 states asked FERC to initiate industrywide rate investigations for natural gas and oil pipelines as well as electric public utilities.³ On Jan. 11, the Michigan Public Service Commission requested that FERC take action specific to natural gas pipelines. These entities note that the state commissions already are reviewing the 2017 Tax Act’s impact on state-regulated retail rates.⁴

Precedent exists for FERC’s taking industrywide action. In 1987, it issued Order No. 475 following the 1986 decrease in the federal income tax rate. Order No. 475 had required electric public utilities to voluntarily file for rate decreases or face involuntary rate investigations.⁵ Order No. 475 purposefully exempted interstate natural gas pipelines because at that time most pipeline rates included tax trackers or were subject to periodic rate reviews or rate case “comebacks” that allowed FERC to review their rates every three years.⁶This regulatory regime has changed, however, and few pipelines have tax trackers or seek regular rate reviews. However, several recent pipeline rate settlements require rate adjustments should FERC take industrywide action related to income tax law changes.⁷

Despite the precedent for an industrywide review, FERC may prefer a case-by-case approach. One possibility is that FERC will raise tax over-recoveries in individual rate review orders issued under NGA Section 5. With some exception, FERC has initiated NGA Section 5 rate investigations into a handful of pipeline rates every year since 2009 based on preliminary findings that overall costs and revenues are not balanced. NGA Section 5 investigation orders could be issued later this month if FERC follows last year’s pattern.⁸However, the January 2018 FERC meeting agenda does not appear to include any NGA Section 5 proceedings. It is likely that FERC will set for hearing (and include the issue of federal income taxes) for those interstate natural gas pipelines that seek rate increases to satisfy rate filing obligations resulting from comebacks in prior rate settlements. These specific cases may also give some indication of how FERC plans to treat the pipeline industry as a whole. FERC also could take action in its pending Notice of Inquiry Regarding the Commission’s Policy for Recovering Income Tax Costs initiated in December 2016 in Docket No. PL17-1-000, which considers whether to update FERC’s Policy Statement on Income Tax Allowances in effect since 2005.

We will continue to monitor this issue with an eye toward how our clients can prepare and take timely actions in light of the commission’s evolving policies. Please let us know if you would like to discuss this or other issues that you may be facing.

¹ DTE Midstream Appalachia, LLC, Data Request, Docket No. CP17-409-000, Enclosure question no. 1 (Jan. 12, 2018).

² See Letters requesting additional information in the following proceedings: DTE Midstream Appalachia, LLC., Docket No. CP17-409; Paiute Pipeline Co., Docket No. CP17-471; Southern Natural Gas Co., LLC., Docket No. CP17-46; and WBI Energy Transmission, Inc., Docket No. CP17-257.

³ See Jan. 9, 2018, Letter to “Request to Open an Investigation into the Justness and Reasonableness of Jurisdictional Utilities’ Rates and to Adjust Revenue Requirements to Reflect the Reduction in their Federal Income Taxes” filed by state consumer advocates and attorneys general from Texas, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Florida, available here: https://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=14794891.

⁴ Letter from Sally Talberg, Norman Saari and Rachel Eubanks, Chairman and Commissioners, Mich. Pub. Serv. Commission, to Kevin J. McIntyre, Cheryl LaFleur, Neil Chatterjee, Robert Powelson and Richard Glick, Chairman and Commissioners, Fed. Energy Regulatory Commission (Jan. 11, 2018).

⁵ Order No. 475, Electric Utilities; Rate Changes Relating to Federal Corporate Income Tax Rates for Public Utilities, 39 FERC ¶ 61,357 (1987).

⁶ See Order No. 475 at n.3 (“Natural gas pipeline companies’ rates will automatically be adjusted since tax trackers have been included in the majority of the natural gas pipeline companies’ rate settlements. Changes in oil pipeline rates will be made on a case-by-case basis”).

⁷ See, e.g., Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of Am., 162 FERC ¶ 61,009 at P 13 (2018); Great Lakes Gas Transmission Limited Partnership, 161 FERC ¶ 63,024 (2017).

⁸ See Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America LLC, 158 FERC ¶ 61,044 (2017), an example of one of the Section 5 rate reviews that the commission instituted in 2017.