The provision contained in incumbent electric utility tariffs—conferring on the holder the right of first refusal (ROFR) to construct additions to the high-voltage electrical grid, regardless of who conceived of and proposed the addition—is unduly discriminatory, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held in a July 1 decision in Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. v. FERC, No. 14-1281. The court’s decision upheld utility-specific applications of the FERC mandate—a central open-access innovation of the agency’s Order No. 1000 (Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation by Transmission Owning and Operating Public Utilities)—that directed independent system operators and regional transmission organizations (ISO/RTO) to remove from their existing tariffs and membership agreements the ROFR provision (Removal Mandate).
Earlier in South Carolina Public Service Authority v. FERC, 762 F.3d 41 (D.C. Cir. 2014), the same court generally had upheld the Removal Mandate as applied to ISO/RTOs but had reserved judgment on whether the 60-year-old Mobile-Sierra presumption that the rates in negotiated arm’s length natural gas and power sales agreements are just and reasonable applied to the ROFR provisions of the ISO/RTO tariffs and membership agreements. In Sierra, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the presumption applies against not only the parties to a negotiated agreement but against FERC itself...
