October 2016, Vol. 243, No. 10

General

NAESB 3.0 Compliance for Natural Gas Pipelines

Trellis Energy said its latest version of the platform (Trellis 6.0) is the first to become 100% compliant with the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) Wholesale Gas Quadrant Standards version 3.0.

NAESB is an industry forum that develops standards that lead to a seamless, secure and accountable marketplace for wholesale and retail natural gas and electricity. While all interstate pipelines were to comply with the revised standards beginning April 1, until now there was no commercially available gas transaction management solution fully compliant with the latest NAESB standards, the company said.

Over the course of the last year, Trellis worked with several multinational pipeline operators to develop a compliant platform and the product was implemented for a FERC-regulated pipeline in the first quarter. Among other changes, updates to the NAESB standard include a requirement that natural gas pipelines add an intraday nomination cycle to help synchronize all interstate gas pipelines. This means pipelines must confirm and schedule five times a day instead of four times. All transactions flow from the platform directly to the NAESB compliant informational posting website.

“This is not a trivial change, by any means,” said Rakesh Agarwal, CEO and president, Trellis. “Natural gas pipelines run like a web across the entire country and are governed by complex regulations that differ between states. Adding in an additional nomination cycle has a direct impact and consequence on interconnecting pipeline processes for operators. “