OREANDA-NEWS. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will preserve the current operating schedule for interstate natural gas pipelines, walking away from its proposal to move the start of the gas day five hours earlier to help avoid electric reliability problems.

FERC in a final rule issued today found there were not sufficient benefits to justify shifting the start of the gas day to 4 am CT, given costs and potential operational and safety issues.

The gas-electric coordination rule will preserve the existing nationwide 9am CT start to the gas day. But the commission adopted other changes to the gas day that could boost flexibility for shippers. US electric grids operate on a 24-hour cycle that starts at midnight in operators' local time, while the gas day start is uniform across North America.

Declining to change the start of the gas day will be a relief to pipeline owners and gas utilities, which were united in opposing the change. They worried the scheduling change, proposed last year, would force them to spend millions of dollars changing their scheduling practices and hiring staff, with potential safety risks from having to work in dark, nighttime conditions.

Interstate Natural Gas Association of America president Don Santa today said he was "gratified" the commission listened to the gas industry and retained the gas day start time. The association represents midstream gas operators.

But keeping the existing gas day will be a setback to northeast regional grid operators, who have worried about reliability concerns from gas generators running out of scheduled fuel during the middle of the morning ramp. The problem was most pronounced during the extreme cold of the 2013-14 winter, when forced outages for gas generators spiked.

But the commission's final rule includes more flexibility for scheduling gas deliveries on the pipelines.

The decision to extend the deadline for the timely nomination cycle to 1 pm CT from 11:30 am CT, along with adding a third intraday nomination cycle, would provide more flexibility to shippers, FERC chairman Norman Bay said at the commission's monthly open meeting today.

But he said more progress could be made in gas-electric coordination by pipelines potentially shifting to faster computerized scheduling and creating new, more flexible products and services.

Despite walking back from the earlier plan to shift the gas day start, FERC member Philip Moeller said the rulemaking process worked as intended. "That is the point of a [notice of proposed rulemaking.] We put out an idea and see how people respond."

The commission declined to change the gas day start in part because it could have shifted some of the problems in eastern markets to the west, FERC member Tony Clark said. Gas producers raised "very legitimate safety concerns" about having to put workers into the field in the middle of the night when conditions were icy.

The final rule will take effect 75 days after it is published in the Federal Register.