U.S. Energy Regulator Sharpens Focus on Market Integrity & Oversight in 2025 Report

Key Takeaways

• FERC Enforcement Priorities: Fraud and market manipulation, reliability violations, anticompetitive behavior, energy infrastructure threats, and transparency risks anchored FY2025 oversight.
• Investigations and Resolutions: DOI opened 24 new investigations, closed 17 with no action, resolved 163 self-reports, and handled 307 hotline matters.
• Settlements: FERC approved 11 settlements totaling about $36.57 million, plus separate restitution and penalty orders.
• Audit Findings: DAA completed 10 audits with 63 noncompliance findings, 260 recommendations, and about $80 million in refunds and recoveries.
• Market Monitoring: DAS conducted more than 3,700 market surveillance reviews, issuing 11 referrals and supporting roughly 70 investigations.

Deep Dive

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is taking stock of a busy year in enforcement, releasing its nineteenth Annual Report on Enforcement with a clearer picture of how the agency spent FY2025 policing the country’s natural gas and electricity markets.

The report, produced by FERC’s Office of Enforcement and Regulatory Accounting, shows an agency leaning heavily on data analytics, traditional auditing work, and a steady flow of investigations to keep market behavior in check. It also highlights how the agency responded to threats ranging from manipulation schemes to infrastructure risks, issues that have increasingly defined FERC’s enforcement playbook.

This year’s priorities were familiar but sharply drawn: fraud and market manipulation, serious violations of the Reliability Standards, anticompetitive conduct, threats to the nation’s energy infrastructure, and anything that chips away at market transparency. While the agency publicly details its audits, settlements, and litigation, the report also gives companies a rare look at the kinds of non-public matters FERC closes quietly, including investigations, self-reports, and market monitor referrals that didn’t warrant further action. The entities involved remain unnamed, but the examples are meant to serve as a compliance guidepost.

Within the Division of Audits and Accounting, staff flagged a series of recurring problem areas through nearly a dozen compliance alerts. The division completed 10 audits across public utilities, natural gas companies, and oil pipelines, documenting 63 findings of noncompliance and issuing 260 recommendations. Those reviews also resulted in roughly $80 million in refunds and recoveries. Beyond audits, DAA weighed in on 447 proceedings ranging from accounting method approvals to rate and certificate cases, while continuing to oversee the enormous volume of Electric Quarterly Reports and financial filings submitted each year.

On the market surveillance side, the Division of Analytics and Surveillance continued operating as FERC’s early-warning system. Staff reviewed about 1,780 natural gas market screens, digging deeper into two dozen trading patterns and ultimately referring one matter for investigation, and conducted 1,920 electric market reviews that led to 36 follow-up analyses and 10 referrals. The division also worked closely with investigators on roughly 70 ongoing manipulation and tariff-related cases, supplying data-driven assessments and calculating potential market harm and unjust profits.

The investigative side of Enforcement saw a similarly active year. The Division of Investigations opened 24 new cases, closed 17 others with no further action, resolved 163 self-reports from companies, and fielded 307 calls through the agency’s enforcement hotline. Staff also kept two federal court cases moving on the Commission’s behalf.

Settlement activity was steady, with FERC approving 11 agreements totaling about $36.57 million, made up of $22.84 million in civil penalties and $13.73 million in disgorgement. The agency also signed off on a $5 million restitution settlement in an administrative proceeding and issued a $30,000 penalty order tied to a hydroelectric project.

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