NEM is pleased to announce that Cantor Fitzgerald and Tradespark have been nominated to NEM's Executive Committee. Cantor Fitzgerald is a financial services conglomerate with operating units that are involved in a variety of market-based business initiatives. TradeSpark is the world's most comprehensive neutral exchange for energy traders. With TradeSpark's proven real time trading platform, you can solicit and execute trades with unprecedented speed, efficiency and cost-savings versus traditional voice-based trading. Harry Fry, Senior Managing Director, Cantor Fitzgerald, Robert Hayes, Chief Operating Officer, TradeSpark, and Jeff Bandman, Senior Vice President, Cantor Fitzgerald, and Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, eSpeed will represent Cantor Fitzgerald and Tradespark within NEM.

The Leadership of the NEM Executive Committee is seeking nominations for the National, Regional and State Policy Chairs and Co-Chairs for the comming year. If you would like to volunteer for a leadership role or wish to nominate someone for such a role, please forward the name and position to headquarters at your ealiest convenience. All the nominations will be circulated prior to the Annual June 20 Membership Meeting and Conference, and a special meeting of the Executive Committee is being considered for the evening of June 19 to vote on the nominations at a location to be determined.

Senators, FERC, PUC and FTC Commissioners have confirmed for NEM's Annual Membership Meeting and National Restructuring Conference to be held June 20 and 21, 2002, at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, DC. An updated agenda, registration form and electronic brochure is hotlinked here for your convenience. Please note that the discounted registration fee for the conference has been extended to May 3, 2002. We are planning the reception and would appreciate an early head count. Also there are only a limited number of rooms at our discounted rate of $139/night.

A large turnout attended the initial drafting session for the NEM-EEI Master Netting Agreement (MNA). Many thanks to Chris Bernard and Marty Jo Rogers of Entergy-Koch for leading the NEM effort and hosting the meeting and to DeDe Russo, Vince Duane, Wade Hoefling and David Perlman for leading this effort. Comments on the current draft MNA are due May 8, 2002. A second draft will be circulated by May 13, 2002, and comments are to be submitted by May 21, 2002. A third draft will be presented to the NEM-EEI Drafting Committee for final comments, and a final version of the Master Netting Agreement will be rolled out on or about May 30, 2002, at a follow-up meeting in which the entire agreement will again be discussed in detail. The time and location of this meeting are to be determined. The full texts of the Draft Master Netting Agreement, Draft Cover Sheet, and Draft Collateral Annex are hotlinked here and available on the NEM Website.

CFTC issued a NOPR to amend its rules implementing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act with respect to trading facilities and clearing organizations. The proposed rules provide that: 1) the exemptive period included in the definition of "dormant contract" be changed to the time following initial exchange certification or Commission approval; 2) when a registered entity that has become dormant wants to list or relist an initial product for trading, it must continue to satisfy the criteria for designation or registration; 3) the terms and conditions of products for which voluntary approval is sought will be made publicly available; 4) only exchange fees relating to delivery of an enumerated agricultural commodity should be subject to prior-approval requirements and all other fees should only be subject to the certification requirement; and 5) all changes to contract terms and conditions, except rules relating to margin levels, must be submitted to the Commission for prior approval. Comments on the NOPR are due June 25, 2002. The full text of the NOPR is available on the NEM Website.

NEM submitted comments opposing EIA's proposal to extend EIA Form 910 for three additional years and to increase the sample population beyond the five states currently covered by the Form. NEM continued to urge EIA to direct its reporting requirements to regulated distribution and transmission entities from which it is already collecting data, to only ask marketers to report on a voluntary basis, and to limit any marketer reporting to those states in which 25% of gas customers have migrated. NEM noted that imposition of the reporting requirements has already imposed onerous one-time and on-going compliance costs on marketers and that expanded use of the Form would only increase those costs. The full text of NEM's Comments is available on the NEM Website.

Staff has issued an analysis and recommendations on the NOPR to consolidate standards of conduct and apply them uniformly to all regulated transmission providers. Staff recommends a number of modifications to the rulemaking as a result of comments received.

In response to concerns raised by NEM and other that the proposed definition of "energy affiliate" was too broad, Staff proposed the following definition:

"an affiliate of a transmission provider that (1) engages in or is involved in transmission transactions in U.S. energy or transmission markets; or (2) manages or controls transmission capacity of a transmission provider in U.S. energy or transmission markets; or (3) buys, sells, trades or administers natural gas or electric energy in U.S. energy or transmission markets; or (4) engages in financial transactions relating to the sale or transmission of natural gas or electric energy in U.S. energy or transmission markets. The definition of energy affiliate excludes (1) other affiliated regulated transmission providers; and (2) holding or service companies that do not engage in or are involved in transmission transactions in U.S. energy markets."

Staff also recommended: 1) requiring transmission providers to treat their bundled retail sales business as an energy affiliate although the sharing of non-transmission functions between transmission providers and energy affiliates should continue to be permitted, 2) the "automatic imputation rule" should be adopted with respect to information prohibitions for shared employees, 3) transmission providers and energy affiliates should be permitted to share operational information necessary to maintain the reliabiliy of the system, 4) the pre-existing standard of conduct exceptions permitting transportation function employees to buy and sell gas for operational reasons should be retained, and 5) transmission providers should be required to post discounts for transmission service at the conclusion of negotiations when the offer becomes binding.

A technical conference will be convened to discuss Staff's analysis and recommendations on May 21, 2002, at 9:30AM. The full text of Staff's Analysis is available on the NEM Website.

FERC issued a NOPR on standardized generation interconnection setting forth a proposed standardized interconnection agreement and standardized interconnection procedures. The NOPR provides that: 1) transmission providers and affected third parties are responsible for coordinating and performing studies and upgrades to accommodate interconnection requests; 2) accelaration of interconnection construction is permitted so long as generators receive credits or are reimbursed by the requesting generator for the accelerated upgrades; 3) the NOPR will only be applicable when a generator interconnects to a transmission provider's transmission system or makes wholesale sales in interstate commerce at the transmission or distribution voltage level; 4) small generators should be responsible for all studies and upgrades needed to accommodate their facilities subject to an accelerated procedure; 5) the transmission provider and the transmission owner should be signatories to the interconnection agreement; and 6) interconnection service should be subject to the reciprocity requirements set forth in Order 888. The Commission requested comments on whether its current interconnection pricing policy should be retained pursuant to which all generation facilities, not just generator step-up transformers, would be removed from the transmission charge and directly assigned as sole use facilities. The Commission also requested comments on how to make the generator interconnection pricing adopted in this proceeding consistent with the locational marginal pricing methodology in the standard market design proceeding. Comments on the NOPR are due 45 days after publication in the Federal Register. The full text of the NOPR is available on the NEM Website.