Natural Gas Industry Passes Some Important Milestones

摘要

The year 2013 will mark a couple of important birthdays for the US wholesale natural gas industry— the 75th anniversary of the Natural Gas Act (NGA) and the 20th anniversary of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) Order 636. The first one, the NGA, is the basic statute underlying the regulation of the interstate natural gas business. Now, at 75, I guess it can get on a plane without taking off its shoes. One way this makes me feel old is that I remember writing a column for this publication's predecessor, wishing the NGA a happy 50th birthday. The fundamentals of the NGA have changed very little since Franklin Delano Roosevelt included it in his New Deal package of transformational laws; thus, the question of its relevance and effectiveness is appropriate after so many years.