Natural gas.

Existing law requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) to conduct electricity and natural gas forecasting and assessment activities, as specified. Under existing authority, the Energy Commission has established the Petroleum Market Advisory Committee to assist the Energy Commission in better understanding the factors and conditions related to petroleum price fluctuations and associated impacts, as well as policy options that may affect petroleum markets. This bill would require the Energy Commission to identify, collect, and analyze certain data regarding the natural gas market to determine causes of natural gas price volatility experienced by end-use customers. The bill would require the Energy Commission, in coordination with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) , to establish the Joint Agency Natural Gas Market Oversight Committee to review the data gathered and analyzed and to provide ongoing comments, insight, and recommendations about natural gas market behavior and transactions related to potential exercise of market power and market manipulation and methods to deter those activities. The bill would require the committee, if it identifies evidence suggestive of illegal market manipulation or the exertion of market power by natural gas distribution and transmission companies or core transport agents, to provide the evidence to the enforcement division of the PUC for further evaluation. The bill would authorize the committee to require natural gas distributors to submit certain data regarding the natural gas market. Existing law requires the PUC to require each electrical corporation, electric service provider, and community choice aggregator to file an integrated resource plan, and a schedule for periodic updates to the plan, to ensure that those entities achieve certain objectives. This bill would require the integrated resource plans filed by those entities to include an evaluation of wholesale market risks, including each entity's risk management policy, strategy, practices, and measures to manage and reduce risk from price volatility in the wholesale electricity and natural gas markets. Under existing law, a violation of the Public Utilities Act or any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the PUC is a crime. By requiring the PUC to direct electrical corporations and electric service providers to include wholesale market risk management plans as a part of their integrated resource plans, thereby making it a crime for those entities to fail to comply, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.