Natural gas needs significantly more infrastructure to support its expansion regardless of how much it costs, a federal energy regulator said today.
"We are likely going to have high natural gas prices for a while, and you are just going to have to get used to it," said Philip Moeller, a commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, before a natural gas roundtable hosted by the American Gas Association.
A way to mitigate this reality, or at least create more stability, is through the creation of more infrastructure and obtaining more natural gas "from every source possible," Moeller said.
Moeller would not comment specifically on opening offshore or Western natural gas fields in the United States, but he did emphasize the need to weigh costs and benefits to future generations when barring access to these resources.
An important part of building more infrastructure is creating more clarity into natural gas regulations, Moeller said. "There have been a lot of questions because FERC has exercised authority in a relatively short period of time," he said.
FERC has and will continue to clarify regulations on price reporting, transparency in the volume of transactions going through pipelines, pipeline recovery costs and the range of fines FERC will issue for regulation violations authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, he said.
But key questions remain, especially regarding transparency requirements such as voluntary versus mandated reporting or third-party monitored data, Moeller said.
Although FERC has issued rulemaking notices on some of these issues, the commissioner said he hoped the industry would continue to submit comments and suggestions, because many of these subjects are new to the regulatory body.
FERC is a changed agency from where it was a year ago when Moeller was appointed to the commission. It gained more authority and enforcement capabilities under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a strength that has appeared in its rulings in the last six months on wholesale power markets, reformation of the rate proxy groups for pipeline companies and market reporting requirements.
Today was the one-year anniversary for Moeller on the commission. It was also the end of the year in which he recused himself from market rulings regarding his former position at Alliant Energy Corp.
Moeller said he was an "undefined commodity" to the industry outside the Beltway because he never ran for public office, choosing to work behind the legislative scenes instead. The commissioner said he hoped that in the coming months he would be able to have more opportunities to define and share his points of view with the public.
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