Terms Used In Montana Code > Title 69 > Chapter 3 > Part 14 - Natural Gas Utility Restructuring and Customer Choice Act

• Assets: (1) The property comprising the estate of a deceased person, or (2) the property in a trust account.
• commission: means the public service commission provided for in 2-15-2602. See Montana Code 69-1-101
• Complaint: A written statement by the plaintiff stating the wrongs allegedly committed by the defendant.
• Customer: means a natural gas customer or consumer of natural gas supply or natural gas transmission facilities, storage facilities, or distribution facilities. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Distribution facilities: means those facilities that are not transmission facilities:

  (a)by and through which natural gas is received from a transmission services provider and transmitted to the customer; and

  (b)operated by a distribution services provider. See Montana Code 69-3-1402

• Distribution services provider: means a person controlling or operating distribution facilities for distribution of natural gas to the public. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Docket: A log containing brief entries of court proceedings.
• Lease: A contract transferring the use of property or occupancy of land, space, structures, or equipment in consideration of a payment (e.g., rent). ^{Source: OCC}
• Liabilities: The aggregate of all debts and other legal obligations of a particular person or legal entity.
• Natural gas production and gathering resources: means plants or equipment, minerals, and mineral rights used to extract natural gas from the earth and to collect, purify, measure, regulate, compress, and transport natural gas from its place of production to its connection with a transmission facility. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Natural gas supplier: means a person, including aggregators, market aggregators, brokers, and marketers, licensed by the commission that is offering to sell natural gas to retail customers in the state of Montana. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Natural gas utility: means a utility regulated by the commission on May 2, 1997, that provides natural gas services to the public. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Obligation: An order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period.
• Open access: means that a natural gas utility has made its transmission facilities, storage facilities, or distribution facilities available to all natural gas suppliers, transmission services providers, distribution services providers, and customers on a nondiscriminatory and comparable basis. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Oversight: Committee review of the activities of a Federal agency or program.
• Performance-based ratemaking: means those forms of regulation that include but are not limited to the use of revenue indexing, price indexing, ranges of authorized return, gas cost indexing, and innovative use of utility-related assets and activities, such as system sales of excess natural gas supplies, release of upstream pipeline capacity, and performance of billing services for other natural gas suppliers. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Person: includes a corporation or other entity as well as a natural person. See Montana Code 1-1-201
• State: when applied to the different parts of the United States, includes the District of Columbia and the territories. See Montana Code 1-1-201
• Storage facilities: means those facilities that are owned, controlled, or operated by a person offering storage service for natural gas and generally means any underground reservoir suitable for the storage of natural gas and the facilities used to inject and withdraw natural gas into and out of that underground reservoir. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Transition costs: means :

  (a)a natural gas utility's net, verifiable production-related and gathering-related costs, including costs of capital, that become unrecoverable as a result of customer choice and open access. See Montana Code 69-3-1402

• Transmission facilities: means those facilities owned, controlled, and operated by a transmission services provider that are used to transport natural gas from a gathering line or storage facility to a distribution facility, storage facility, or end-use customer. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Transmission services provider: means a person controlling or operating transmission facilities. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Universal system benefits charge: means a nonbypassable rate or charge to be imposed on a customer to pay the customer's share of universal system benefits program costs. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Universal system benefits programs: means public purpose programs for cost-effective local energy conservation, low-income energy bill discounts, low-income weatherization, and emergency low-income energy bill assistance. See Montana Code 69-3-1402
• Writing: includes printing. See Montana Code 1-1-203