[Docket No. PHMSA-2017-0129]
On August 16, 2017, the Office of Management and Budget approved the collection of calendar year (CY) 2017 Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility Annual Reports. PHMSA issued a Notice of their proposal to use CY 2017 annual report data in the user fee rate structure for both fiscal year (FY) 2018 and 2019. During the FY 2018 user fee process, PHMSA will use CY 2016 annual report data for gas transmission pipelines, hazardous liquid pipelines, and liquefied natural gas facilities. Using CY 2016 data ensures adequate time to verify annual report data quality.
PHMSA proposes the following steps for developing the user fee rate structure. PHMSA will sum the number of wells from sections C7 and C8 of the UNGS annual report for each operator. The operator well counts will be parsed into 10 tiers. The lowest values will be in tier 1 and the highest values in tier 10. The minimum and maximum well counts for each tier will be selected to place an equal number of operators in each tier. The tier fee structure is designed to place a larger share of the user fee on operators with higher well counts. The following percentages of the total user fee would be billed to each tier:
| Tier | Percentage of Total |
| 1 | 2% |
| 2 | 4% |
| 3 | 5% |
| 4 | 6% |
| 5 | 8% |
| 6 | 10% |
| 7 | 12% |
| 8 | 13% |
| 9 | 15% |
| 10 | 25% |
PHMSA invites interested persons to comment on the underground natural gas storage facility data collection described in this notice by January 8, 2018. Comments may be submitted on the E-Gov web site. Reference Docket No. PHMSA–2017–0129 at the beginning of your comments.
For of copy PHMSA’s Notice from the Federal Register, contact Jessica Foley.