Commissioner James Danly Statement
August 24, 2023
Docket No. RP23-910-000
Today’s order denies Sea Robin Pipeline Company, LLC’s request to make its tariff filing filed on July 25, 2023 “effective retroactively on June 1, 2023”[1] for “lack of good cause shown.”[2] I agree that the request should be denied. However, we did not need to apply the good cause shown test here because the request was for retroactive ratemaking that the Commission has no statutory authority to grant.[3]
For these reasons, I respectfully concur.
[1] Sea Robin Pipeline Co., LLC, 184 FERC ¶ 61,112, at P 3 (2023).
[2] Id. PP 10-11.
[3] See Okla. Gas & Elec. Co. v. FERC, 11 F.4th 821, 829-30 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (“The so-called ‘[filed rate] doctrine’ is shorthand for the interconnected statutory requirements that bind regulated entities to charge only the rates filed with FERC and to change their rates only prospectively. When it applies, the filed rate doctrine is ‘a nearly impenetrable shield’ and does not yield, ‘no matter how compelling the equities.’”) (quoting Old Dominion Elec. Coop. v. FERC, 892 F.3d 1223, 1230 (D.C. Cir. 2018)).