Recently in Regulation Category

In 1958, Congress implemented the first -- and, to date, only -- ban on the creation of a futures market based on an individual commodity.

And if Senator Blanche Lincoln has her way, financial instruments based on movie returns could join onions in the presently small list of outright verboten commodities.

Many have tried to duplicate Bart Chilton's candor when it comes to market analogies -- CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has sought to link derivatives with the cow that purportedly started the great Chicago fire in 1871 while former Acting Chairman Walter Lukken in 2008 likened the government's response to the financial crisis to a "military engagement" -- but few can pull them off as well as Bart.

The comments on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's energy position-limit proposal are pouring in -- 6,900 as of this writing, to be precise -- as the April 26 deadline looms. A great majority of these comments have come in the shape of form letters, presumably from private citizens, sent via e-mail from public domains such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.

"I went to the belly of the beast and survived," Barclays natural gas analyst Tom Driscoll told his clients in a phone message Friday morning.

The beast?

A panel discussion Thursday night at New York City's Cooper Union: "Hydro-fracking for Natural Gas -- how this 'clean' fuel technology threatens our water, our health, our landscapes, and our energy future."

Whew.

It may look a lot like an RTO, and act like one, but the system functions being contemplated by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council would not amount to a regional transmission organization that needs federal approval. The West is still the West, after all.

Which may raise the question: Was it necessary for all the other regional transmission organizations to jump through FERC's hoops? It seemed necessary at the time, and it could be that the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and California wouldn't do it differently. But the Western Interconnection is figuring out a way to take on much of an RTO role without having to suffer FERC's hand.

State utility regulators as a national group are a hardy bunch, and dedicated, if their semi-annual committee-meeting gatherings tell the story. Their staffs are maybe even more so. These men and women in unglamorous jobs typically spend the meeting weekend, from early morning to night, listening, discussing, negotiating, recommending. But state budget woes are taking their toll this time.

Our colleague Tom Tiernan reported from Sunday's session of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners' winter meeting, in Washington as usual, that while the typical crowd of lobbyists and interest-group people were there, a number of state commission staff members were not. The room at more than one session was not nearly so full as usual.

One of the most interesting jobs available right now in Washington may be director of the Eastern Interconnection States Planning Council. Who will be interested? One of cynical bent might say: people inclined toward self-punishment.

The positive way to say that would be: super self-disciplined people who love challenges.

The EISPC is to be funded by $14 million in stimulus money from the Department of Energy to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The point is to represent state interests in planning transmission facilities for the entire Eastern Interconnection, from the Great Plains to the Atlantic seaboard -- something never before tried, and incredibly complex.

Dozens of environmental organizations took out an eye-catching full-page ad in the Washington Post Tuesday aimed at Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. On the one-year anniversary of the devastating Kingston power plant ash spill, the groups said: "It is time for the coal industry to clean up its act."

The groups are hyper-aware that EPA is walking a precarious path. It has been negotiating with the Office of Management and Budget about proposed coal ash regulation. EPA/OMB have been meeting this fall with lots of industry groups that want badly to avoid hazardous-waste designation, and EPA said last week it was delaying its decision from the promised end-of-year to sometime soon after.