New Rules For Pipeline Gas Quality

A new policy statement issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in July will let each interstate gas pipeline and its customers work out quality standards for gas the pipeline will transport.The standards must be within certain general parameters.

The policy statement will affect all participants in the gas industry, including suppliers of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and end users of gas like owners of power plants.

The commission adopted a case-by-case approach rather than impose uniform gas quality standards that would apply to all pipelines.

The agency was prompted to act by an increase in the last five years in the volume of administrative litigation before FERC over pipeline gas quality specifications. A lot of the litigation is linked to actual or proposed LNG imports and to unprocessed, non-conforming gas being delivered to pipelines for transportation. In the past, pipelines were more likely to be asked to transport processed gas.