How will FERC respond?
November 2005 By J. Michel Marcoux Under Natural Gas Act (NGA) Sections 4(a) and (b), and 5(a), natural gas companies engaged in interstate commerce must charge just and reasonable, non-discriminatory rates.1 When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) determines rates are unjust and unreasonable, § 5(a) requires that agency, either on its own motion or on complaint to it, to determine and order just and reasonable, non-discriminatory rates on a prospective basis.2 Because these laws are so critical to predictable interstate gas storage and transportation rate regulation, NGA §§ 4 and 5 are not amended every day. In fact, except for minor § 4(e) rewording in 1962, §§ 4 and 5 had not been changed from 1938 until the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT05), effective Aug. 8, 2005. If only in that sense, as a rare amendment to a venerable statute, EPACT05 § 312, New Natural Gas Storage Facilities, made headlines by appending a new subsection (f) to § 4. But the new law also tells us
