Paul MacAvoy
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300083811
- eISBN:
- 9780300129328
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300083811.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
Over the past six decades, federal regulatory agencies have attempted different strategies to regulate the natural gas industry in the United States. All have been unsuccessful, resulting in ...
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Over the past six decades, federal regulatory agencies have attempted different strategies to regulate the natural gas industry in the United States. All have been unsuccessful, resulting in nationwide gas shortages or massive gas surpluses, and costing the nation billions of dollars. Additionally, partial deregulation has led the regulatory agency to become more involved in controlling individual transactions among gas producers, distributors, and consumers. This book demonstrates that no affected group has gained from these experiments in public control and that all participants would gain from complete deregulation. Although losses have declined with partial deregulation in recent years, current regulatory practices still limit the growth of supply through the transmission system. This history of the regulation of natural gas is a cautionary tale for other natural resource or network industries that are regulated or are about to be regulated.Less
Over the past six decades, federal regulatory agencies have attempted different strategies to regulate the natural gas industry in the United States. All have been unsuccessful, resulting in nationwide gas shortages or massive gas surpluses, and costing the nation billions of dollars. Additionally, partial deregulation has led the regulatory agency to become more involved in controlling individual transactions among gas producers, distributors, and consumers. This book demonstrates that no affected group has gained from these experiments in public control and that all participants would gain from complete deregulation. Although losses have declined with partial deregulation in recent years, current regulatory practices still limit the growth of supply through the transmission system. This history of the regulation of natural gas is a cautionary tale for other natural resource or network industries that are regulated or are about to be regulated.
