Abstract
Studies the first sixteen years of the federal regulation of the interstate gas pipeline industry in the United States (1938-54), focusing on government and business interaction and how it enabled or hindered responsiveness to market forces. Discuses the nineteenth-century manufactured-gas industry in the Northeast and its demise with the expansion of Southwest to Northwest natural gas transmission; how World War II energy demand, combined with government interest in financing energy systems, stimulated entrepreneurial activity aimed at transporting fuel to the vital war production and refining centers in the Appalachian region; how the U.S. government financed the construction of five petroleum pipeline systems; how various interest groups clashed over the fate of the two of these pipelines that directly connected the Texas oil and gas region with the Philadelphia and New York City area; and how Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, having won the bid for these two pipelines, immediately faced opposition from the coal and railroad interests to its plans to deliver natural gas into the Northeast. Describes the conversion of New York City to natural gas, and the race between various natural gas suppliers for the New England market. Concludes that the episode of regulated enterprise in the natural gas pipeline industry from 1938 to 1954 was a success and that it demonstrates how regulation designed to carefully facilitate operative market forces can perform in the public interest. Castaneda is Director of the Oral History of Houston Economy project. Index.