[Federal Register Volume 60, Number 197 (Thursday, October 12, 1995)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Pages 53114-53117]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 95-25096]



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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

18 CFR Parts 357 and 382

[Docket No. RM95-12-000; Order No. 583]


Minimum Filing Requirements for FERC Form No. 6, Annual Report 
for Oil Pipelines; Final Rule

    Issued October 3, 1995.

AGENCY: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission).

ACTION: Final rule.

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SUMMARY: The Commission in this order revises the filing requirements 
for FERC Form 6, Annual Report of Oil Pipeline 

[[Page 53115]]
Companies, and exempts certain oil pipeline companies with minimal 
jurisdictional revenues from the requirement for paying annual charges. 
The Commission exempts from the requirements to prepare and file Form 
6, those pipelines whose jurisdictional operating revenues are at or 
below $350,000 for each of the three preceding calendar years. Those 
companies that will be exempt from filing Form 6 must nevertheless 
prepare and file, for each reporting year, page 700, ``Annual Cost of 
Service Based Analysis Schedule,'' of Form 6. The Commission also 
relieves those companies not required to file Form 6 from the 
obligation to pay annual charges to the Commission.

EFFECTIVE DATE: Section 357.2 is effective on January 1, 1995 and 
Sec. 382.102 is effective on November 13, 1995.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Harris S. Wood, Office of the General 
Counsel, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 825 North Capitol 
Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20426, Telephone: (202) 208-0696.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: In addition to publishing the full text of 
this document in the Federal Register, the Commission also provides all 
interested persons an opportunity to inspect or copy the contents of 
this document during normal business hours in Room 3104, 941 North 
Capitol Street NE., Washington, DC 20426.
    The Commission Issuance Posting System (CIPS), an electronic 
bulletin board service, provides access to the texts of formal 
documents issued by the Commission. CIPS is available at no charge to 
the user and may be accessed using a personal computer with a modem by 
dialing (808) 856-3920. To access CIPS, set your communications 
software to 19200, 14400, 12000, 9600, 7200, 4800, 2400 or 1200bps, 
full duplex, no parity, 8 data bits, and 1 stop bit. The full text of 
this document will be available on CIPS in ASCII and WordPerfect 5.1 
format. The complete text on diskette in WordPerfect format may also be 
purchased from the Commission's copy contractor, La Dorn Systems 
Corporation, also located in Room 3104, 941 North Capitol Street NE., 
Washington, DC 20426.

Order No. 583--Final Rule

    Issued October 3, 1995.
    Before Commissioners: Elizabeth Anne Moler, Chair; Vicky A. 
Bailey, James J. Hoecker, William L. Massey, and Donald F. Santa, 
Jr.

    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) in this order 
revises the filing requirements for FERC Form 6, Annual Report of Oil 
Pipeline Companies (Form 6), and exempts certain oil pipeline companies 
with minimal jurisdictional revenues from the requirement for paying 
annual charges. The change establishing the minimum filing threshold 
for Form 6 will become effective on January 1, 1995 and the change to 
the annual charges regulations will become effective, 30 days after the 
publication of a final rule in this proceeding in the Federal Register, 
for fiscal year 1996.
    The Commission exempts from the requirements to prepare and file 
Form 6, those pipelines whose jurisdictional operating revenues are at 
or below $350,000 for each of the three preceding calendar years.1 
For the reasons appearing below, those companies that will be exempt 
from filing Form 6 must nevertheless prepare and file, for each 
reporting year, page 700, ``Annual Cost of Service Based Analysis 
Schedule,'' of Form 6.2

    \1\Notwithstanding the threshold exemption from filing FERC Form 
No. 6, all jurisdictional oil pipelines will continue to be subject 
to the Commission's accounting and recordkeeping requirements (e.g., 
18 CFR Parts 351, 352, and 356.)
    \2\When filing page 700, each exempt pipeline must also submit 
page 1 of Form 6. This page includes the Identification and 
Attestation schedules of Form 6.
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    The Commission also relieves those companies not required to file 
Form 6 from the obligation to pay annual charges to the Commission.

I. Background

    Order No. 5613 was issued on October 22, 1993, to comply with 
the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (Act of 1992),4 which required that 
the Commission establish a simplified and generally applicable method 
of oil pipeline rate regulation. Thereafter, on October 28, 1994, the 
Commission issued Order No. 571, which established certain filing 
requirements for oil pipelines seeking cost-of-service rate treatment 
and promulgated changes to Form 6.5

    \3\Revisions to Oil Pipeline Regulations Pursuant to the Energy 
Policy Act of 1992, Order No. 561, III FERC Stats. & Regs. 
para.30,985 (1993); Order on Rehearing, Order No. 561-A, III FERC 
Stats. & Regs. para.31,000 (1994).
    \4\42 U.S.C. 7172 note (West Supp. 1993).
    \5\Cost-of-Service Reporting and Filing Requirements for Oil 
Pipelines, III FERC Stats. & Regs. para.31,006 (1994).
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    The Commission's regulations currently require each jurisdictional 
oil pipeline company to submit Form 6 annually, reflecting the 
operating results and the financial condition of the company involved, 
irrespective of the level of jurisdictional operations.6

    \6\18 CFR 357.2.
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II. Public Reporting Burden

    The Commission estimates the public reporting burden for the 
collection of information under this final rule will be reduced for 
Form 6 by about 18 percent. These estimates include the time for 
reviewing instructions, researching existing data sources, gathering 
and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the 
collection of information. The current annual reporting burden of these 
information collection requirements is 22,572 hours, 148 responses, and 
148 respondents.7

    \7\These numbers are based on an average of respondents expected 
to file Form 6. The number of respondents actually filing the Form 6 
may vary slightly each year.
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    The final rule will reduce the existing reporting burden associated 
with Form 6 by an estimated 4,128 hours annually, or an average of 129 
hours per response based on an estimated 32 oil pipelines who will be 
exempt from the filing requirements of Form 6 but not from the filing 
requirements of page 700.
    Comments regarding these burden estimates or any other aspect of 
these collections of information, including suggestions for reducing 
this burden, can be sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 
941 North Capitol Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20426 [Attention: 
Michael Miller, Information Services Division, (202) 208-1415]; and to 
the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of OMB (Attention: 
Desk Officer for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), FAX: (202) 395-
5167.

III. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

    On June 8, 1995, the Commission issued a notice of proposed 
rulemaking (NOPR) in this docket, proposing to exempt from the 
requirements to file Form 6, those pipelines with annual jurisdictional 
revenues of $100,000 or less in each of the past three years, and to 
exempt such pipelines from payment of annual fees.8 The Commission 
stated that the statistical information needed to carry out its 
responsibilities under the Interstate Commerce Act and the Energy 
Policy Act of 1992 would not be significantly impacted by exempting 
such oil pipelines from preparing and filing Form 6. Moreover, the 
annual charges paid by such companies would be de minimis. The burden 
on these companies would be considerably eased by adoption of such a 
rule as proposed. The Commission proposed to require that the exempt 
companies be required to prepare and file page 700 of Form 6, however, 
since this page is an integral 

[[Page 53116]]
part of the Commission's data collection efforts to ensure that the 
index prescribed by Order No. 561 properly tracks industry costs. Page 
700 provides shippers with the necessary information to serve as a 
preliminary screening tool for pipeline rate filings. It is designed to 
enable shippers to compare proposed changes in rates against the change 
in the level of a pipeline's cost of service, to compare the change in 
a shipper's individual rate with the change in a pipeline's average 
company-wide barrel-mile rate, and to determine whether to challenge a 
pipeline's indexed rate increase filings. As such, page 700 provides 
the Commission and the public with information beyond the financial and 
accounting data found in the rest of Form 6. Because the information 
found on page 700 is not readily available elsewhere, the Commission 
proposed to require those pipelines that would be exempt from filing 
Form 6 to prepare and file page 700 at the time that other pipelines 
are required to file Form 6 (i.e., on or before March 31 of each year 
for the previous calendar year).

    \8\IV FERC Stats. & Regs. para.32,515 (1995); 60 FR 31262, June 
14, 1995.
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    Comments on the NOPR were received from Mitchell Energy Corporation 
(MEC) and NGC Energy Resources, Limited Partnership (NER). MEC strongly 
supported the Commission's proposed rule. NER generally supported the 
proposed rule, but suggested that it be revised to increase, from 
$100,000 to $250,000, the minimum annual jurisdictional operating 
revenue threshold for exempting oil pipelines from filing Form 6. For 
the reasons appearing below, the Commission will increase the reporting 
threshold proposed in the NOPR to $350,000.

IV. Discussion

    Form 6 provides the Commission with financial and operational data 
for the proper administration of the Commission's responsibilities for 
rate regulation of oil pipelines under the Interstate Commerce Act, as 
amended,9 and the Act of 1992. The Commission proposed to 
establish a filing threshold for Form 6 based on the annual 
jurisdictional operating revenues of an oil pipeline company.

    \9\49 App. U.S.C. 1, et seq. (1988).
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    Analysis of the 146 oil pipelines that filed Form 6 for the 1993 
reporting year indicates that, at the $100,000 minimum threshold level 
for filing Form 6, 22 oil pipelines, or 15 percent of the 1993 total, 
had jurisdictional operating revenues at or below this level. At the 
$350,000 level, 32 oil pipelines, or 22 percent of the 1993 total, had 
jurisdictional operating revenues at or below this level.
    NER urged the Commission to raise the minimum threshold level to 
$250,000, asserting that companies with operational revenues of less 
than $250,000 have relatively minimal jurisdictional transactions, and 
that the Commission's statistical data will not be measurably 
compromised by exempting these pipelines from reporting requirements. 
In addition, NER asserted that increasing the threshold level will not 
substantially increase the number of exempt pipelines.
    The Commission agrees with NER that it should increase the 
threshold above what it proposed in the NOPR in this proceeding. 
However, the Commission will adopt $350,000 as the threshold. We 
conclude that exempting pipelines under this threshold would not 
compromise the Commission's ability to gather meaningful data upon 
which to base its regulation of the oil pipeline industry. Therefore, 
the Commission will exempt from the requirements of filing Form 6 those 
oil pipelines with annual jurisdictional operating revenues of $350,000 
or less for each of the immediately preceding three reporting years.
    A pipeline will be exempt from preparing and filing FERC Form 6 if 
its jurisdictional operating revenues for the three calendar years 
immediately preceding the current reporting year were $350,000 or less 
per reporting year. For a newly established pipeline without three 
years of operations, the company would use projected data to determine 
whether Form 6 needs to be filed.
    No comments were received on any other aspect of the NOPR. For the 
reasons stated above and in the NOPR, the rules proposed, as modified 
to increase the threshold exemption to $350,000, will be adopted as the 
final rule of the Commission in this proceeding.

V. Environmental Analysis

    The Commission is required to prepare an Environmental Assessment 
or an Environmental Impact Statement for any action that may have a 
significant adverse effect on the human environment.10 The 
Commission has categorically excluded certain actions from these 
requirements as not having a significant effect on the human 
environment.11 The action taken here is procedural in nature and 
therefore falls within the categorical exclusions provided in the 
Commission's regulations.12 Therefore, neither an environmental 
impact statement nor an environmental assessment is necessary and will 
not be prepared in this rulemaking.

    \10\Order No. 486, Regulations Implementing the National 
Environmental Policy Act, 52 FR 47897 (Dec. 17, 1987), FERC Statutes 
and Regulations, Regulations Preambles 1986-1990 para.30,783 (1987).
    \11\18 CFR 380.4.
    \12\See 18 CFR 380.4(a)(2)(ii).
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VI. Regulatory Flexibility Act Certification

    The Regulatory Flexibility Act13 generally requires the 
Commission to describe the impact that a final rule would have on small 
entities or to certify that the rule will not have a significant 
economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. An analysis 
is not required if a final rule will not have such an impact.14

    \13\5 U.S.C. 601-612.
    \14\5 U.S.C. 605(b).
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    Pursuant to section 605(b), the Commission certifies that the final 
rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial 
number of small entities. The final rule will relieve small entities of 
the burden of preparing and filing annual reports and of paying annual 
charges to the Commission.

VII. Information Collection Requirements

    Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations require OMB to 
approve certain information collection requirements imposed by agency 
rules.15 While these rules and amendments contain no new 
information collection requirements, the final rule will revise and 
reduce the reporting requirements under existing Form 6. The Commission 
uses the data collected under Form 6 to monitor the financial and 
operating data of oil pipeline companies subject to its jurisdiction, 
and to assist in determining the reasonableness of rates.

    \15\5 CFR 1320.13.
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    Because of the revisions and expected reduction in public reporting 
burden under Form 6, the Commission is submitting a copy of the final 
rule to OMB for its review and approval. No person required to file 
page 700 of Form 6 shall be penalized for failure to respond to this 
collection of information unless the collection of information displays 
a valid OMB control number. Interested persons may obtain information 
on these reporting requirements by contacting the Federal Energy 
Regulatory Commission, 941 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, D.C. 
20426 [Attention: Michael Miller, Information Policy and Standards 
Branch, (202) 208-1415, FAX (202) 208-2425]; and to the Office of 
Information 

[[Page 53117]]
and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget (Attention: 
Desk Officer for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), Washington, 
D.C. 20503.

VIII. Dates

    This final rule will apply on January 1, 1995 for the change 
establishing the minimum filing for Form 6 and the requirement that 
exempted pipelines annually prepare and file page 700 of Form 6. The 
change to the annual charges regulations will apply on November 13, 
1995 for fiscal year 1996.

List of Subjects

18 CFR Part 357

    Pipelines, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements.

18 CFR Part 382

    Administrative practice and procedure, Electric utilities, 
Pipelines, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements.

    By the Commission.
Lois D. Cashell,
Secretary.
    In consideration of the foregoing, parts 357 and 382, chapter I, 
title 18, Code of Federal Regulations, are amended as set forth below.

PART 357--ANNUAL SPECIAL OR PERIODIC REPORTS: CARRIERS SUBJECT TO 
PART I OF THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT

    1. The authority citation for part 357 is revised to read as 
follows:

    Authority: 42 U.S.C. 7101-7352; 49 U.S.C. 60502; 49 App. U.S.C. 
1-85.

    2. Section 357.2 is revised to read as follows:


Sec. 357.2  FERC Form No. 6, Annual Report of Oil Pipeline Companies.

    Each pipeline carrier subject to the provisions of section 20 of 
the Interstate Commerce Act whose annual jurisdictional operating 
revenues has been more than $350,000 for each of the three previous 
calendar years must prepare and file with the Commission copies of FERC 
Form No. 6, ``Annual Report of Oil Pipeline Companies,'' pursuant to 
the General Instructions set out in that form. This report must be 
filed on or before March 31st of each year for the previous calendar 
year. Newly established entities must use projected data to determine 
whether FERC Form No. 6 must be filed. One copy of the report must be 
retained by the respondent in its files. The conformed copies may be 
produced by any legible means of reproduction. Notwithstanding the 
exemption provided above, those carriers exempt from filing Form No. 6 
must prepare and file page 700, ``Annual Cost of Service Based Analysis 
Schedule,'' of FERC Form No. 6 on or before March 31 of each year for 
the previous calendar year, beginning with the year ending December 31, 
1995. When submitting page 700, each exempt carrier must submit page 1 
of Form No. 6, the Identification and Attestation schedules.

PART 382--ANNUAL CHARGES

    3. The authority citation for part 382 continues to read as 
follows:

    Authority: 5 U.S.C. 551-557; 15 U.S.C. 717-717w, 3301-3432; 16 
U.S.C. 791a-825r, 2601-2645; 42 U.S.C. 7101-7352; 49 U.S.C. 60502; 
49 App. U.S.C. 1-85.

    4. Section 382.102(c) is revised to read as follows:


Sec. 382.102  Definitions.

* * * * *
    (c) Oil pipeline company means any person engaged in the 
transportation of crude oil and petroleum products subject to the 
Commission's jurisdiction under the Interstate Commerce Act with annual 
operating revenues greater than $350,000 in any of the three calendar 
years immediately preceding the fiscal year for which the Commission is 
assessing annual charges.
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[FR Doc. 95-25096 Filed 10-11-95; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6717-01-P