SFPP Has A Right To Lift West Line Rates, after Last Year’s Deferral; Commission Tweaks Opinion 527

摘要

Last Friday, on 6/28/13, FERC accepted, subject to refund and a hearing, tariff records lodged on May 21 by SFPP, LP (IS13-416) to implement an index-based increase to rates and ceiling levels, effective July 1. The right to make oil pipeline rates equivalent to a FERC-adjusted rate ceiling has often been contentious, but FERC reaffirmed at the outset in this order that “a rate that is not increased to the ceiling level in a given year may nonetheless be increased to the ceiling level at a later time." Applying the Commission’s percentage comparison test, SFPP sought to demonstrate the divergence produced by the index percentage increase (7.934%) and the cost decrease (0.56%) is 8.3534 percentage points, a divergence that is less than 10% and within the bounds of what the Commission has accepted in the past.