Federal and state governing bodies have been regulating public utilities since the 1930s.
These regulations have been important as far as the forming of the natural gas distribution infrastructure that we have in the United States today. Over the past 80 years, there have been a number of regulations made to create the system we have today for transactions between utilities and their customers.
Although deregulation has changed many of the rules, two things remain the same: federal regulation of the commerce between two states is the responsibility of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, and the regulation between utilities within a state are handled by the state’s Public Utilities Commission.
Customers benefit from natural gas deregulation because it brings competition which leads to the lowest rates possible in a market. Learn more about natural gas deregulation and how it evolved to what it is today.