Department of Energy June 14, 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EMSSAB), Rocky Flats. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted an information collection package to the OMB for extension under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The package requests a three-year extension of its ``Technology Partnership Ombudsmen Reporting Requirements'', OMB Control Number 1910-5118. This information collection package covers information necessary to implement a statutory requirement that the Technology Transfer Ombudsmen report quarterly on complaints they receive.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) is amending the FERC Form No. 73, Oil Pipeline Service Life Data to allow for filing in an Excel spreadsheet, eliminate the filing requirement for utility codes, which are no longer used by the Commission, and update the filing instructions to delete references to outdated filing formats. These modifications resulted from a review conducted by the Commission's FERC Information Assessment Team (FIAT) of the Commission's current reporting and information collection requirements to evaluate their original purposes and current uses and to propose ways to reduce the reporting burden on industry through the elimination, reduction, streamlining or reformatting of current collections. The information collected on FERC Form No. 73 assists the Commission in the selection of appropriate oil pipeline service lives and book depreciation rates. Some oil pipeline companies use the book depreciation rates to compute their operating expenses for accounting and cost of service purposes.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) is amending its nuclear plant decommissioning trust fund (Fund) guidelines to remove the requirement that the financial report that public utilities furnish to the Commission each year must show all purchases and sales of investments and substitute a requirement that public utilities must include in their report a summary amount for purchases of fund investments and a summary amount for sales of fund investments. All other reporting requirements in the special provisions that relate to Fund reports remain in place; e.g., records of individual purchases and sales of investments must still be maintained even if such individual transactions are not routinely reported. These modifications are the result of a review conducted by the Commission's Information Assessment Team (FIAT), identifying the Commission's current information collections, evaluating their original purposes and current uses, and proposing ways to reduce the reporting burden on industry through the elimination, reduction, streamlining or reformatting of current collections. These changes in the Commission's regulations will reduce the reporting burden on the electric industry while simultaneously simplifying Fund reports and making it easier for the Commission to review them.