Energy Legal Blog

PR News announced that Bracewell & Giuliani’s Energy Legal Blog will be recognized as the best “Legal PR Blog” at its annual Corporate Social Responsibility & Legal Awards Luncheon on February 24, 2010 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This award recognizes an outstanding and influential law-related weblog or online journal written by a representative of the organization with the goal of espousing the brand or a certain message and written with flair and personality.

“Managing a crisis and working with legal counsel are two areas of communication that will always be a part of a PR professional’s responsibilities,” notes Diane Schwartz, vice president of PR News. “The Legal PR Awards shines a light both on how law firms are communicating to their stakeholders and to how the PR industry is in the driver’s seat when a crisis hits.”

More information on the award program and this year’s winners is available at http://www.prnewsonline.com/awards/csr2009_event-finalists.html.

FERC recently articulated a broad view of pipelines’ ability to “aggregate” bids when using a net present value (NPV) evaluation process in awarding open-season capacity.   It is reasonable, FERC explained, for pipelines to aggregate open-season bids in a manner that allows them to determine the highest value for all of their available capacity—even when that entails aggregating portions of larger bids, and even when the bidder with the highest individual NPV ultimately is not the winning bidder.  According to the agency, this flexible approach will allow pipelines to maximize the incremental revenue to all customers, including captive customers, and will help new shippers access pipelines’ system. (more…)

FERC has clarified that in-house attorneys who simply draft or redraft contracts without making decisions about the contract’s commercial terms are not considered “marketing function employees” and thus are not subject to the Independent Functioning Rule under the FERC Standards of Conduct for Transmission Providers by virtue of such drafting activity.  The Standards of Conduct require marketing function employees to work independently of transmission employees and to be shielded from access to non-public information pertaining to transmission. (more…)

FERC Order No. 717-A purports to “clarify” FERC’s Standards of Conduct governing the relationship between transmission providers and their marketing affiliates by limiting the ability of certain utility legal, finance and regulatory employees to serve both the marketing and the transmission sides of the business.  This order, if not stayed, takes effect November 23. (more…)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the US Department of Commerce on September 24 released its first round of almost 80 draft “Smart Grid” standards, which are intended to establish a framework for Smart Grid development.  These initial standards establish a conceptual model for the Smart Grid by (1) addressing how the many complex systems that make up the Smart Grid interrelate to each other; (2) developing a cyber-security strategy; and (3) identifying interfaces for which interoperability standards are needed.  (Interoperability-a key issue in standards for the Smart Grid-refers to the ability of diverse systems and their components to work together.)  The standards are available for public comment for the next 30 days (until around October 24, 2009), after which NIST will finalize them and send them to FERC for final approval and formal issuance.

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 directed the Federal Communications Commission to develop a National Broadband Plan. To help develop that plan, the FCC has requested comment on how advanced telecommunications services and infrastructure, and broadband in particular, can help implement Smart Grid technology. (more…)