What messaging records do energy and utility companies have to keep for FERC compliance?

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulates aspects of the interstate transmission and wholesale sale of electricity, natural gas, and oil, along with the entities and markets that support them. While FERC’s recordkeeping rules are best known for accounting and operational documents, the same obligations now reach the electronic messages employees use to conduct business. If a message documents a regulated activity, it is a record regardless of the tool that produced it.

What counts as a messaging record

A “record” is defined by content and function, not by format. Under FERC’s framework, messaging content can qualify when it captures business activity such as:

• Communications about energy transactions, bids, offers, scheduling, and dispatch
• Discussions touching market participation, hedging, or price formation
• Coordination on reliability, outages, maintenance, or compliance
• Correspondence relevant to tariffs, filings, audits, or investigations

This applies across channels: email, SMS and text messages, instant messaging and chat platforms, collaboration tools, and voice messages. The trend in regulatory enforcement has been to treat “off-channel” communications (personal devices, unapproved apps) as fully discoverable and subject to the same capture and retention duties.

Core obligations

FERC’s market and reliability rules generally require regulated entities to:

• Retain communications related to regulated activities for a defined period. Retention windows vary by record type and program, so confirm the specific schedule in the applicable FERC regulations rather than assuming a single number.
• Preserve integrity so messages remain complete, authentic, and unaltered.
• Produce records on request during audits, investigations, or enforcement.

Practical steps for compliance

• Define which message types are records and map them to retention schedules.
• Capture messages from all approved channels and prohibit off-channel business use.
• Apply legal holds promptly when litigation or investigation is anticipated.
• Document policies so retention and disposition are defensible.

Treating messages as records up front—consistent with recognized standards like ISO 15489—reduces enforcement and e-discovery risk. For broader guidance on governing chat and text as records, see the email and messaging topic hub.

Because requirements change, verify current retention periods directly in FERC’s regulations and orders that apply to your entity.