Department of Energy June 2018 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In a final rule published on January 19, 2017, a number of federal departments and agencies revised to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (often referred to as the ``Common Rule''), which each department and agency adopted into regulations in its part of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) adopted the same changes in a final rule published on September 18, 2017. The revised Common Rule was scheduled to become effective on January 19, 2018, with a general compliance date of the same date. By an interim final rule issued on January 17, 2018 and published in the Federal Register on January 22, 2018, federal departments and agencies delayed the effective date and the general compliance date for the revised Common Rule for a 6-month period, until July 19, 2018. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published an interim final rule adopting the same regulatory changes on January 26, 2018. The revised Common Rule, including technical amendments made by the January 22, 2018 interim final rule, is referred to here as the ``2018 Requirements.'' On April 20, 2018, the federal departments and agencies listed here published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) proposing and seeking comments as to whether the general compliance date for the 2018 Requirements should be delayed for an additional 6-month period. The NPRM also proposed and sought comments on whether to allow regulated entities to implement certain burden-reducing provisions of the 2018 Requirements in specified circumstances during such continued delay period. Through this final rule, we are adopting the proposals described in the April 20, 2018 NPRM. This rule delays the general compliance date for the 2018 Requirements for an additional 6-month period, until January 21, 2019. As a result of this delay, regulated entities will be required, with an exception, to continue to comply with the requirements of the pre-2018 version of the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (the ``pre-2018 Requirements'') until January 21, 2019. The one exception to this general rule is that institutions will be permitted (but not required) to implement, for certain research, three burden-reducing provisions of the 2018 Requirements during the delay period (July 19, 2018, through January 20, 2019). Those three provisions are: The revised definition of ``research,'' which deems certain activities not to be research covered by the Common Rule; the elimination of the requirement for annual continuing review with respect to certain categories of research; and the elimination of the requirement that institutional review boards (IRBs) review grant applications or other funding proposals related to the research. Institutions taking advantage of the three-burden reducing provisions must comply with all other pre-2018 Requirements during the delay period. The three burden-reducing provisions of the 2018 Requirements can only be implemented during the delay period with respect to studies initiated prior to January 21, 2019 that will transition to compliance with the revised Common Rule. Any study that implements these three burden-reducing provisions during the delay period must, beginning on January 21, 2019, comply with all of the 2018 Requirements for the balance of the study's duration.

In compliance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission or FERC) is submitting the information collections FERC-917 (Non- discriminatory Open Access Transmission Tariff) and FERC-918 (Information to be posted on OASIS & Auditing Transmission Service Information) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review of the information collection requirements. Any interested person may file comments directly with OMB and should address a copy of those comments to the Commission as explained below. The Commission published 60-day and 30-day notices (in the Federal Register on February 6, 2018, and May 9, 2018, respectively), for the renewal of the FERC-917 and FERC- 918 information collections. Both notices requested comments on FERC- 917 and FERC-918 and indicated the Commission will submit the information collections to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. The cost information was inadvertently omitted from the Notices. Due to this oversight, we provided an additional 15 days for comments, which are due June 27, 2018. In addition, some figures included in the Errata Notice (published in the Federal Register on June 12, 2018) are being corrected in this Notice. Any interested person may file comments directly with OMB and should address a copy of those comments to the Commission as explained below. (There are no changes to the information collections.)

The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted an information collection request to the OMB for extension under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The information collection requests a three-year extension of its Legal Collection, OMB Control Number 1910- 0800. The proposed collection will enable DOE to continue to maintain DOE control and oversight of DOE contractor's invention reporting and related matters.

The Industry Advisory Board (IAB) to the International Energy Agency (IEA) will meet on June 26, 2018, at at the UIC-P, 16 Rue Jean Rey, 75015 Paris, France, in connection with a joint meeting of the IEA's Standing Group on Emergency Questions (SEQ) and the IEA's Standing Group on the Oil Market (SOM) on June 27, 2018. There will be a meeting involving members of the Industry Advisory Board (IAB) to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in connection with the IEA's 9th Emergency Response Exercise (ERE9) to be held at the OECD Conference Centre, 2 Rue Andr[eacute]-Pascal, 75016 Paris, France, on June 28-29, 2018.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted an information collection request to the OMB for extension under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The information collection requests a three-year extension of its Procurement Collection, OMB Control Number 1910-4100. This information collection request covers information necessary to administer and manage DOE's procurement and acquisition programs.

EIA is requesting a three-year extension of EIA-882T, ``Generic Clearance for Questionnaire Testing, Evaluation, and Research.'' EIA-882T provides EIA with the authority to utilize qualitative and quantitative methodologies to pretest questionnaires and validate the quality of data collected on EIA's surveys. EIA uses EIA-882T to meet its obligation to publish, and otherwise make available independent, high-quality statistical data to federal government agencies, state and local governments, the energy industry, researchers, and the general public.

The Office of Fossil Energy (FE) of the Department of Energy (DOE) gives notice (Notice) of the availability of a study, Macroeconomic Outcomes of Market Determined Levels of U.S. LNG Exports (2018 LNG Export Study or Study), in the above-referenced proceedings and invites the submission of comments on the Study. DOE commissioned the 2018 LNG Export Study to inform DOE/FE's decisions on applications seeking authorization to export domestically produced liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the lower-48 states to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement (FTA) requiring national treatment for trade in natural gas, and with which trade is not prohibited by U.S. law or policy (non-FTA countries). The purpose of this Notice is to enter the 2018 LNG Export Study into the administrative record of the 25 pending non-FTA export proceedings (listed above) and to invite comments on the Study for use in the pending and future non-FTA application proceedings. The 2018 LNG Export Study is posted on the DOE/FE website at: https://fossil.energy.gov/ app/docketindex/docket/index/10.