FERC Technical Conference To Examine Credit, Counterparty Risk Issues In RTOs Due To COVID-19

June 8, 2020

Email This Story
Copyright 2010-20 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

The following story is brought free of charge to readers by EC Infosystems, the exclusive EDI provider of EnergyChoiceMatters.com

FERC has issued an agenda for a July 8-9 technical conference concerning impacts that the emergency conditions caused by COVID-19 are having on various segments of the United States’ energy industry, with specifics concerning FERC's focus on access to capital now available

A July 9 panel will address, "Access to Capital - Credit, Liquidity, and Return on Equity"

"The COVID-19 emergency has had a significant impact on the financial markets and the financial health of individual companies, which has introduced new risks that could potentially impact access to capital. Some of these risks include, but are not limited to, decreased demand, lower commodity prices, reduced access to credit and reduced market liquidity, increased delinquencies, insolvent customers/unrecoverable defaults, lower and/or more volatile stock prices, construction delays, and lags in rate recovery," the agenda notes

Among other things, the panel will address:

Credit Issues

• What risk factors from the COVID-19 emergency are most acute, particularly with respect to potential credit-rating downgrades and other credit deterioration?

• How has the COVID-19 emergency affected the counterparty risks that pipelines face from natural gas and oil shippers, and that RTOs/ISOs face from power market participants and what are those counterparty risks? What new measures, if any, are needed to address these risks?

• How could energy, capacity, natural gas, and oil markets be affected if market participants get credit downgrades or face other conditions that could limit their ability to participate in those markets?

• Is there an increased risk of financial failure of a major market participant due to the COVID-19 emergency? If so, are adequate credit monitoring and collateral requirements in place to limit that impact?

Liquidity and Access to Capital

• What, if any, liquidity issues are panelists seeing in energy markets due to the COVID-19 emergency? What are the principal causes of those liquidity issues? What are the impacts of those liquidity issues on operations and infrastructure development?

Docket No. AD20-17-000

ADVERTISEMENT
NEW Jobs on RetailEnergyJobs.com:
• NEW! -- Senior Manager, Energy Market Research & Analytics -- Houston
• NEW! -- Pricing Analyst -- Houston
• NEW! -- Senior Energy Intelligence Analyst -- Energy Procurement
• NEW! -- Channel Partner Sales Manager -- Retail Supplier