El Paso Pipeline Partners, L.P. | 2013 | FY | 3


Regulated Operations

Our interstate natural gas pipelines, storage operations and LNG receiving terminal are subject to the jurisdiction of the FERC and follow the FASB's accounting standards for regulated operations. Under these standards, we record regulatory assets and liabilities that would not be recorded for non-regulated entities. Regulatory assets and liabilities represent probable future revenues or expenses associated with certain charges or credits that are expected to be recovered from or refunded to customers through the rate making process. Items to which we apply regulatory accounting requirements include certain postretirement benefit plan costs, losses on reacquired debt, losses on the sale of certain long lived assets, taxes related to an equity return component on regulated capital projects in periods prior to our subsidiaries' change in legal structure to non-taxable entities, certain cost differences between gas retained and gas consumed in operations and other costs included in, or expected to be included in, future rates. See Note 11 for further discussion regarding our regulated operations.

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