The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) assessed a $7 million civil penalty on BP Energy Company for violations of FERC’s capacity release policies. In addition, BP will “implement a compliance monitoring plan to resolve multiple violations of regulations for posting and bidding of released capacity, the shipper-must-have-title requirement, and the prohibition on buy-sell transactions. The violations involved thousands of individual transactions in 2005 and 2006 stemming from BP’s management of customers’ capacity rights on interstate natural gas pipeline and storage facilities. The most serious of BP’s violations involves a practice known as ‘flipping,’ which evidences a deliberate strategy for evading FERC regulations that require posting and competitive bidding for discounted long-term releases of capacity…FERC found that BP transported 24.9 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas on capacity it acquired improperly through flipping transactions.” FERC noted in a press release that BP “could have faced substantially higher penalties had it not self-reported its violations, and had it not also demonstrated exemplary cooperation with FERC’s Enforcement staff during the investigation.”