BWMQ has provided regulatory and financial assistance to its clients during every phase of the evolution of the natural gas marketplace from Order No. 436 to Order Nos. 636 and 637 to today’s Order No. 678, in which the FERC allows market-based rates for qualifying storage facilities. Today, the industry confronts new challenges: filings for market-based rates, unsubscribed capacity on existing pipelines, new Section 4 and 5 rate case proceedings, recovery of new pipeline safety costs, pipeline industry ownership structure, evolving picture of natural gas’ traditional supply areas, gas/electric coordination, new LNG export facilities with attendant impacts and existing infrastructure. 

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The new circumstances within the gas industry present both challenges and opportunities for nimble industry participants. BWMQ can help secure those opportunities and meet the challenges of its clients through its traditional regulatory and rate case services and also with transactional services such as assistance in structuring gas and financial transactions or in developing new infrastructure projects. BWMQ has the personnel, tools and expertise to assist by testifying in legal or regulatory forums, developing a cost recovery plan, evaluating cost of capital, advising on how to structure aspects of a client’s accounting or the financing, preparing a regulatory application or identifying the impacts of the regulatory principles that should be employed in the regulatory context under evaluation.

BWMQ has extensive experience in the electric transmission industry, including open-access transmission tariffs, rate design, ancillary services, traditional cost of service, nontraditional pricing methods (e.g., opportunity cost, incremental cost, incentive/disincentive rates, and market-based rates), terms and conditions of service, and transmission pricing strategies. 

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BWMQ has advised utilities on the application of the FERC's 7-factor test and on retail wheeling tariff revisions incorporated into a utility's Open Access Transmission Tariff; presented testimony in state restructuring proceedings on retail delivery services tariffs and associated cost-of-service analyses; testified at FERC on appropriate rates for reliability must-run generation; preparing load pocket tariffs, and assistance including testimony on pricing impacts of a proposed electric utility mergers.  

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BWMQ provides assistance to a large number of clients in understanding transmission issues associated with FERC's Open-Access Transmission, notices of proposed rulemaking, development of transmission pricing strategies, drafting transmission and power sales tariffs, preparation of cost of service analyses and testimony in support of transmission and ancillary services rate filings, and assisting in developing strategy for litigation and settlement negotiations.

BWMQ provides a wide range of services to the oil pipeline sector of the energy industry, which faces unique laws, regulations and industry conditions.  While some cost of service issues are similar to those in the natural gas pipeline industry, many crude and refined products lines have aspects unknown to the gas world. BWMQ’s clients include pipeline operators as well as shippers, refiners, and marketers. 

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BWMQ staff consultants have extensive experience in oil work from offshore Texas to the North Slope of Alaska. BWMQ’s familiarity with the opinion 154B methodology, grandfathered rates, and “changed circumstance” thresholds is second to none. BWMQ is noted for its work on the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) rate methodology and its DR&R studies regarding the ultimate dismantlement, removal, and restoration of the facilities.