Department of Energy January 2021 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In compliance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission or FERC) is soliciting public comment on a renewal of currently approved information collection, FERC-725D (Facilities Design, Connections and Maintenance Reliability Standards). This notice includes all modified standards included in FERC725D (FAC-001-3, FAC-002-3, FAC-010-2, FAC- 011-3, and FAC-014-2) in Docket no. IC21-3-000 for renewal which already reflect the changes mentioned in version update RD20-4-000 published separately. All burden totals supersede previous notices for both dockets.

The Department of Energy is publishing this notice to announce that it is terminating the following three Federal Advisory Committees (FACAs) effective January 7, 2021: The Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee (BR&D TAC); Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee (MHAC); and Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technical Advisory Committee (HTAC).

The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) is discontinuing its practice of issuing separate long-term and short- term authorizations for exports of domestically produced natural gas from the same facility (or facilities). DOE is instead establishing a practice that certain long-term authorizations to export domestically produced natural gasincluding liquefied natural gas (LNG), compressed natural gas, and compressed gas liquidinclude additional authority to export the same approved volume pursuant to transactions with terms of less than two years on a non-additive basis (including non-additive commissioning volumes). By consolidating this authority in a single authorization without any increase in total approved export volumes, this action will streamline DOE's regulatory process and reduce administrative burdens. This policy statement affects only future long- term export authorizations issued by DOE under the Natural Gas Act (NGA). DOE is concurrently issuing a blanket order amending existing export authorizations consistent with this policy statement.

This notice announces an online virtual meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP). The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that public notice of this online virtual meeting be announced in the Federal Register.

On December 16, 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a final rule amending the definition of showerhead. This correction republishes an amendment from the final rule that could not be incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) due to an inaccurate amendatory instruction. Neither the errors nor the corrections in this document affect the substance of the rulemaking or any of the conclusions reached in support of this final rule.

The U.S. Department of Energy (Department or DOE) gives notice of this Prohibition Order prohibiting the acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation of specified bulk-power system (BPS) electric equipment that directly serves Critical Defense Facilities (CDFs), pursuant to Executive Order 13920.

In compliance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission or FERC) is soliciting public comment on the currently approved information collection FERC-549B (Gas Pipeline Rates: Annual Capacity Reports and Index of Customers), and is submitting the information collection to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. Any interested person may file comments directly with OMB and should address a copy of those comments to the Commission as explained below.