A Long Economic View on the FERC's New Policy Statements on Natural Gas Pipelines

Abstract

I first contributed to this journal in October 1994, when it was called simply Natural Gas. In those days, great battles raged before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), including between natural gas distributors whose groups I represented—including the 22 distributors in New England, and the natural gas pipeline companies that had historically served them—including Tennessee, Texas Eastern, and Transco. NERA's close involvement generally in regulatory problems involving the 1938 Natural Gas Act (NGA) goes back to the 1950s—particularly the work of my late colleague and friend at NERA, Professor Alfred E. Kahn, on behalf of a group that would later be known as the Associated Gas Distributors (AGD). In such a way, NERA has wrestled with US natural gas industry problems under the NGA for over 65 years. We have the long perspective.