FERC's Revised Penalty Guidelines: Not So Different from the Original

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") reissued its Penalty Guidelines on September 17, 2010, ¹after providing industry members the opportunity to comment on the original Penalty Guidelines issued six months earlier, in March 2010. As a result of that comment period, FERC is maintaining the penalty calculation methodology of the original Guidelines but has made some efforts to clarify and adjust the Guidelines to address industry questions and concerns. The most significant of those clarifications and changes are listed below.

When the Guidelines were first issued earlier this year, Jones Day developed an all-inclusive, one-page flowchart to assist companies in applying the Guidelines' penalty calculation methodology to their specific circumstances. We have now revised that flowchart to reflect FERC's changes to the Guidelines. The flowchart reduces the Guidelines' penalty metrics to a single (large, 11"x17") page. To analyze the potential penalty