PUC Orders Retail Suppliers To File Contract Summaries for PUC Compliance Review

The Pennsylvania PUC's Office of Competitive Market Oversight (OCMO) issued a secretarial letter directing all retail natural gas suppliers serving residential and small business customers to submit to the PUC draft sample contract summaries they intend to use to comply with the PUC's recent order adopting a contract summary form.

As previously reported, the PUC recently adopted regulations (with approval of the Independent Regulatory Review Commission provided on June 30) requiring that natural gas suppliers (NGSs) shall provide, with the disclosure statement, a separate contract summary in a format provided by the Commission. Click here for background and a link to the template contract summary form adopted by the PUC

The PUC said in adopting the regulations that suppliers would be directed to submit their standard forms to OCMO for informal review

"All NGSs that are actively soliciting residential and small business customers are directed to submit a draft sample of the Contract Summary they intend to use. NGSs should submit one sample for each product type they intend to offer: e.g. fixed price, variable price and introductory price products," OCMO said [emphasis by OCMO]

"NGSs are not required to send a sample for every product offered -- it is expected that NGSs will apply the feedback received to all of their Contract Summaries. We also note that, with the exception of NGSs going through the initial licensing process, it is not necessary to seek Commission review of all Contract Summaries going forward. However, NGSs are expected to apply the feedback received to future summaries," OCMO said

OCMO directed NGSs to submit electronic versions of the contract summaries to the Office of Competitive Market Oversight by July 29, 2016.

"It is our intent to review and provide an expeditious response. However, NGSs should comply with the new regulation upon its effective date -- meaning that Contract Summaries should be provided to all new residential and small business customers regardless of whether or not Commission staff has completed its review of the submitted summaries. We understand that certain NGSs may want to first receive the results of the staff’s informal review before using the summaries, and as such, we encourage those NGSs to submit their sample summaries as soon as possible," OCMO said

Docket No. L-2015-2465942