UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION

Electronic Tariff Filings Docket No. RM01-5-000

NOTICE OF PROCEDURES FOR MAKING STATUTORY FILINGS WHEN 

AUTHORIZATION FOR NEW OR REVISED

TARIFF PROVISIONS IS NOT REQUIRED

(June 3, 2020)

This guidance document reiterates prior guidance and sets forth the procedures 

that filers must use to make statutory filings pursuant to section 205(d) of the Federal 

Power Act (FPA), section 4(d) of the Natural Gas Act (NGA), or section 6 of the 

Interstate Commerce Act (ICA) in situations where the filer is not seeking approval of 

new or revised tariff provisions. Herein, the term “statutory filing” means a filing 

pursuant to the above-referenced statutory sections that would go into effect by operation 

of law, absent Commission action, after the expiration of the applicable statutory prior 

notice periods of 60 (under the FPA) or 30 days (under the NGA and ICA), or on a 

specific later effective date proposed by the filer.1 

I. Background

The FPA, NGA, and ICA each give the Commission authority to prescribe rules 

and regulations governing the form of filings to be made thereunder. Pursuant to that 

authority, the Commission issued Order No. 714,2requiring electronic filing for all 

tariffs3 made pursuant to Parts 35, 154, and 341 of the Commission’s regulations, which 

 

1 The Commission also has referred to statutory filings as those having a statutory

action date, i.e., a deadline for Commission action. The effective date of a statutory 

filing, absent Commission action on the filing, is the 61st or 31st calendar day, 

respectively, after the date of filing, or a later date specified by the filer. Under the 

Commission’s regulations, the full 60 or 30 calendar days of notice must expire before 

the filing would become effective. 18 C.F.R. § 385.2007(a) (2019) (“[A]ny period of 

time . . . is computed to exclude the day of the act or event from which the time period 

begins to run.”).

2 Electronic Tariff Filings, Order No. 714, 124 FERC ¶ 61,270 (2008), clarified,

Order No. 714-A, 147 FERC ¶ 61,115 (2014).

3 The term “tariff” “refer[s] to tariffs, rate schedules, jurisdictional contracts, and 

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correspond to FPA, NGA, and ICA filings, respectively. In a subsequent order, the 

Commission explained that all filers making filings pursuant to these statutes must 

choose a statutory filing type and include a proposed effective date in eTariff in order to 

have their filings treated as filings upon which the Commission must act within 

statutorily-established time frames.4 In Order No. 714-A, the Commission revised its 

regulations to specify that filings intending to have statutorily-defined action dates must 

be made pursuant to the requirements and formats for electronic filing.5 That 

requirement is now stated within each applicable Part of the Commission’s regulations:

A tariff or rate filing must be made electronically in 

accordance with the requirements and formats for electronic 

filing listed in the instructions for electronic filings. A tariff 

or rate filing not made in accordance with these requirements 

and formats will not have a statutory action date and will not 

become effective should the Commission not act by the 

requested action date.6

The required formats for electronic filing have been posted by the Secretary of the 

Commission.7 Consequently, any filing that filers intend to become effective by 

operation of law in the absence of Commission action must be made through the 

 

other jurisdictional agreements that are required to be on file with the Commission.” Id.

at P 13 n.11. The regulations promulgated by Order No. 714 required electronic filing of 

“tariffs, rate schedules and service agreements, or parts thereof, and material that relates 

to or bears upon such documents, such as cancellations, amendments, withdrawals, 

termination, or adoption of tariffs.” See 18 C.F.R. § 35.7(a) (2019).

4 Electronic Tariff Filings, 130 FERC ¶ 61,047, at P 5 (2010).

5 Order No. 714-A, 147 FERC ¶ 61,115 at P 4 (“The regulations now will provide 

explicitly that only tariff filings properly filed as and designated as statutory filings 

according to the Commission’s eTariff requirements will be considered to have statutory 

action dates, and that tariff filings not properly filed and designated as statutory filings 

will not become effective in the absence of Commission action.”). See Pioneer 

Transmission, LLC, 169 FERC ¶ 61,265 (2019) (a filing not made through eTariff does 

not have a statutory action date).

6 18 C.F.R. §§ 35.7(d), 154(d), 341(d) (2019).

7 Office of the Secretary, Implementation Guide for Electronic Filing of Parts 35, 

154, 284, 300, and 341 Tariff Filings (Implementation Guide) (Version: November 14, 

2016), https://www.ferc.gov/docs-filing/etariff/implementation-guide.pdf.

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Commission’s eTariff system. Under the eTariff system, the statutory action dates for 

statutory filings are determined only by examining the filer’s proposed effective dates in 

the tariff record dataset of an eTariff filing.8 Therefore, a statutory filing must be 

submitted using eTariff and must include at least one actual (not a pro forma) tariff 

record with a proposed effective date. 

Since the development of eTariff, however, instances have arisen in which a filer 

seeks to make a statutory filing, but the authorization sought does not require the filing of 

a new or revised tariff record. For example, a public utility transmission provider with 

formula rates may wish to make a statutory filing pursuant to section 205 of the FPA for 

Commission approval of recovery through its formula transmission rates of certain costs 

such as those held as a regulatory asset, pre-commercial costs, or abandonment costs. If 

the existing formula rate on file contains a placeholder for recovery of these costs, the 

filing may not require a tariff revision to the public utility’s rate formula in order to 

recover these costs upon authorization by the Commission. Another example of this 

situation is a response to a Commission staff deficiency letter that does not require a 

revision to the entity’s tariff records.9

II. Procedure for Making a Statutory Filing When No New or Revised Tariff 

Records are Required

To make a statutory filing in circumstances where the filer has no need to change 

the text of the tariff record, the filer must make the filing through eTariff and include at 

least one actual tariff record (i.e., a “live” tariff record, not a pro forma tariff record) with 

 

8

Id. at 5 (“The Commission will use the Type of Filing Code together with the 

Tariff Record Proposed Effective Date to establish whether a filing is statutory and the 

applicable statutory timelines.”).

9 Staff deficiency letters frequently require that the deficiency response filing 

“must be filed ... by making a deficiency filing in accordance with the Commission’s 

electronic tariff requirements.” See, e.g., PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., Docket No. 

ER20-457-000 (Jan. 16, 2020). See generally, Transmittal Letter, Cal. Indep. Sys.

Operator Corp., Docket No. ER17-1432-001, at 2 n.2 (July 5, 2017) (in response to a 

deficiency letter, “a tariff record must be included with the filing. Consistent with the 

Commission’s directive, the CAISO is submitting one unchanged tariff record – proposed 

CAISO tariff Section 26.7.1.”); Transmittal Letter, PacifiCorp, Docket No. ER13-1206-

001, at 4 n.8 (Jun. 20, 2013) (“Because the Deficiency Letter does not direct any changes 

to the proposed tariff revisions, even though Tariff Record Versions must be included in 

this filing, PacifiCorp has included in this filing the unchanged April 1, 2013 Tariff 

Record Versions, and have numbered the versions one version higher in its eTariff filing 

system.”).

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a proposed effective date. The actual tariff record should be an exact duplicate of an 

existing tariff record, but with a proposed effective date that would be the proposed 

effective date for the new filing. While the filer can choose a duplicate of any existing 

tariff record to make such a filing (i.e., Tariff Title, Table of Contents10), staff 

recommends that the filer include a duplicate of a tariff record to which the filing most 

closely relates.11 For example, if the filing is to obtain approval for costs to be added to a 

formula rate, the filer would file a duplicate of its current formula rate tariff record. 

Filing a duplicate of a related existing tariff record will allow the Commission and the 

public to discern how the filing relates to the tariff on file. If the new filing becomes 

effective by operation of law or Commission acceptance, the duplicate eTariff record will 

become the new effective version of that record, superseding the identical tariff record 

without changing the contents of that record. 

Below are the step-by-step procedures to have a tariff filing considered to be 

subject to a statutory action date.

1. The filer must choose a Type of Filing Code (TOFC) within the “Normal” 

Filing Category.12 Specifically, the filer must choose a TOFC appropriate for 

the FERC Program (e.g., electric, market-based electric, NGA, or oil) at issue. 

The Type of Filing Codes for Normal filings include Electric Utilities - TOFC 

10; Market-Based Rate Filers - TOFC 30; Natural Gas Pipelines - TOFC 570; 

and Oil Pipelines - TOFC 830. 

2. Filers with multiple tariff databases should file the duplicate record in the 

Tariff ID to which the filing relates. 

3. The filer must include at least one duplicate of an actual (live) tariff record (not 

a pro forma tariff record) and specify a proposed effective date. 

 

10 See, e.g., Transmittal Letter, at 9, GridLiance W. LLC, Docket No. ER19-191-

000 (filed Oct. 25, 2018) (“The instant Application does not necessitate any change to 

GridLiance West’s tariff. However, to ensure this Application is appropriately 

recognized as statutory submitted pursuant to section 205, GridLiance West includes an 

unrevised tariff record of the cover sheet to its Transmission Owner Tariff.”).

11 See, e.g., cases cited supra note 9.

12 The list of TOFCs can be found in documents posted on the Commission’s 

website at https://www.ferc.gov/docs-filing/etariff.asp. The TOFCs can be found in the 

documents entitled Validation Error Codes, https://www.ferc.gov/docsfiling/etariff/filing_type.csv and Type of Filing Rules Table, https://www.ferc.gov/docsfiling/etariff/types-filing-rules-table.pdf.

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III. Determination of Effective Date for Statutory Filings 

As discussed above, the NGA, ICA, or FPA all specify that filings with a statutory 

action date become effective following a statutory notice period of either 30 or 60 days, 

respectively, unless the Commission takes action that prevents that result. In cases in 

which a filer proposes an effective date for a tariff record that is later than the day after 

the end of the statutory notice period, the filing would become effective on that later date 

in the absence of a Commission order issued before that later date that rejects the filing or 

suspends its effectiveness. Therefore, the effective date for natural gas and oil pipeline 

filings subject to a statutory action date is the later of either the 31st day after the date of 

filing or the earliest of the proposed tariff record effective dates that is after the 31st day, 

and for public utility filings, the later of either the 61st day after the date of filing or the 

earliest of the proposed tariff record effective dates that is after the 61st day. A filing 

requesting waiver of the 30- or 60-day notice period would become effective on the 31st 

or 61st day if the Commission does not issue an order acting on the filing and granting 

the waiver.

IV. How to Ascertain Whether a Filing is Subject to a Statutory Action Date

There are two ways for filers and the public to ascertain the statutory status of a 

filing: the Commission’s eLibrary system or the Commission’s Notice of Filings. 

First, in eLibrary, the search results page of a query includes a field called 

“Description.” eTariff filings normally include a “Filing Type” code at the end of the 

filing’s description. This “Filing Type” corresponds to the codes included in the 

Commission’s list of filing codes.13 All statutory filings will use a “Normal” type filing 

code with a code description indicating a “Time expiration” in a specified number of 

days.14 The following are the filing codes generally associated with pipeline and utility 

 

13 Type of Filing Rules Table, https://www.ferc.gov/docs-filing/etariff/types-filingrules-table.pdf (Filing Rules Table). 

14 While, as discussed earlier, Commission regulations require that pipelines and 

utilities must make statutory filings pursuant to NGA section 4(d), FPA section 205(d), 

and ICA section 6 using a “Normal” filing code, it is not necessarily true that all 

“Normal” filings fall under NGA section 4(d), FPA section 205(d), and ICA section 6. 

The Commission included some electric filing types as “Normal” filings in eTariff, to 

reflect the general Commission business practice of processing those filings within the 

specified time periods. For example, the Commission processes filings by “nonjurisdictional” electric entities for pass-through rates (TOFC Code 1030) as if they were 

FPA section 205(d) filings. Users must consult Commission and court precedent to 

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proposed tariff revisions:

Filing Type Codes

NGA Section 4(d) 570, 630, 640, 650, 660, 680, 690, and 

730

FPA Section 205(d) 10, 30, 280, 320, and 340

ICA Section 6 830, 840, 860, 890, 920, and 930

Second, for public utility and natural gas pipeline proposed tariff revisions, as a 

general matter, the Commission’s combined Notice of Filings publicly issued by the 

Commission’s Secretary translates these codes with a prefatory statement that the filing is 

an NGA “§4(d) Rate Filing” or an FPA “§205(d) Rate Filing” and will include proposed 

effective dates.15

V. Consultation with FERC Staff

Those who have filed or intend to make filings with the Commission may contact 

FERC staff to further discuss the guidance provided herein or other questions with 

respect to making eTariff filings. Inquiries can be directed to the Commission’s eTariff 

help line at (202) 502-6501 or via email at etariffresponse@ferc.gov.

Kimberly D. Bose,

Secretary.

 

determine whether filings are, in fact, subject to statutory time limits.

15 Oil pipeline filings are not noticed.

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Document Content(s)

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