The Commission will convene a retail gas market conference for the purpose of reviewing the gas utilities preparations for the upcoming winter natural gas supply. The gas utilities are requested to discuss costs of summer hedges for storage injection, other summer storage injection costs, cost of any 2011-12 winter hedges for gas delivery, and the costs/benefits from hedging for summer 2013 injections given current gas prices. Suppliers are welcomed to provide information, "to the extent competitive conditions allow." The conference will take place October 30, 2012, at 1:30PM. The full text of the Notice of Conference is available on the NEM Website.

At its agenda meeting this week, the Commission rejected a Petition that had been filed earlier this year for a declaratory order that the gas utilities were under a continuing obligation to provide complete customer lists to gas suppliers operating in their service territories without the imposition of fees on the gas suppliers. The Petition specifically involved NFG and Columbia. The Commission rejected the Petition. However, the Commission decided to open a generic proceeding to establish guidelines on gas utilities provision of electric customer lists finding that, "it would benefit the continued development of the retail market for natural gas supply in Pennsylvania for the Commission to provide uniform guidelines concerning the composition of lists of eligible customers and the terms relating to the provision of these ECLs to NGSs." The Commission found the guidelines for provision of gas customer lists should follow the constructs for provision of electric customer lists, i.e., "(1) licensed competitive suppliers should have access to the distribution utility customer lists, (2) licensed competitive suppliers are obligated to safeguard the confidentiality of customer information and (3) customers will have the opportunity to restrict the release of all of their account information, just the historical data or none of their account information." The gas eligibile customer lists will, however, use ten data elements as follows:
1. Customer Account Number
2. Customer Name
3. Service Address
4. Billing Address
5. Tariff Rate Class and Schedule
6. Rate Subclass/Rate Subcode (if available)
7. Meter Read Cycle
8. SOLR/Shopping Status (Y or N)
9. Monthly Consumption (each of 12 months)(Mcf)
10. Monthly Peak Demand (each of 12 months) (Mcf/d) (if available).

Comments on the proposed Guidelines for provision of gas eligible customer lists are due October 29, 2012. The full texts of the Tentative Order on Gas Eligible Customer Lists and Order on Petition are available on the NEM Website.

The Commission released a "RMI End State Proposal" document for stakeholder discussion. The document sets forth a vision for the utilities provision of default service. Under the proposal, medium and large C&I customers default service price would reflect hourly LMP prices where supported by metering capabilities/load profiling. Otherwise, default service for these customers would be determined under quarterly auctions. Default service pricing for residential and small commercial customers (below 100 kW of demand) would also be determined by quarterly auction. The transition to default service under these constructs would begin June 1, 2015. The OCMO will provide the Commission with a plan by July 1, 2013, for EGS and other third party consolidated billing as well as a plan for permitting customer switching to competitive suppliers between meter reads. Commission Staff will convene a call on October 17, 2012, at 1:30PM to discuss the proposal. The Commission's OCMO plans to submit a Tentative Order for the Commission's consideration at its November 8, 2012, agenda meeting with a proposal on the end state of default service.

Commissioner Cawley issued a concurring and dissenting statement on the proposal arguing that, "attuning supply to market prices alone will not resolve the propensity of most customers to do nothing regarding their electricity supply, even in the face of very significant savings opportunities." Commission Cawley included a Retail Opt-Out Construct to address this problem.

The full texts of the RMI End State Proposal and Commissioner Cawley's Statement are available on the NEM Website.