“ The only respect in which East Ohio differs from that company is that it sells gas direct to consumers rather than for resale. This difference is immaterial. For as we have already pointed out, East Ohio comes directly within the express provision granting power to the Commission to regulate 'transportation of natural gas in interstate commerce,' just as the Illinois company came directly within the express provision covering sale for resale. ”

“ But even if the Court is to shift to the doctrine that Congress casts its Acts forever in the mold made by prior decisions of this Court, the pressure-reduction station now relied upon to limit 'local' had lost its standing even in tax cases and never was accepted in regulation cases. If Congress was interested in tax case criteria when it passed the Natural Gas Act, it must have known of this Court's disdainful disregard of pressure changes in favor of emphasis on the difference between wholesale and retail distribution less than half a year after the East Ohio tax decision. ”

“ We are wholly unpersuaded that Congress intended to treat trunk lines like East Ohio's as though they were mere integrated facilities of the numerous community supply systems which they service. Indeed, as respondents admitted upon oral argument here, the logical consequence of such a principle would be that even a pipe line stretching from Texas to Cleveland would be completely exempt from the federal Commission's jurisdiction if it were owned by East Ohio. ”

“ And in the light of the Illinois Gas decision we cannot see how the 'local distribution' proviso can be construed as encompassing all of East Ohio's operations throughout the state. That proviso cannot mean one thing for "transportation' and another where 'sale for resale' is involved.
Here as elsewhere, once a company is properly found to be a 'natural gas company,' no state can interfere with federal regulation. That a state commission might also have some regulatory power would not preclude exercise of the Commission's function. ”

“ But what Congress must have meant by facilities' for 'local distribution' was equipment for distributing gas among consumers within a particular local community, not the high-pressure pipe lines transporting the gas to the local mains. For in decisions prior to enactment of the statute this Court had sharply distinguished between the two: it had made it clear that the national commerce power alone covered the high-pressure trunk lines to the point where pressure was reduced and the gas entered local mains, while the state alone could regulate the gas after it entered those mains. ”

“ East Ohio is an all-Ohio company, deriving income solely from distributing gas directly to Ohio consumers. It sells no gas for resale. All of its assets are located and all of its business is transacted in Ohio. Since 1911, the Ohio State Commission has exercised regulatory powers over it which have included rate-making, authorizing acquisition of sale of property, approval of capitalization and security issues, complete control of accounting practices and requiring detailed periodic reports. ”

“ Today's anomalous result whereby the Commission is given regulatory power over the intrastate distribution facilities of a gas company over whose sales it admittedly has no jurisdiction is based upon the premise that paramount in Congress' mind in dealing with cases prior to passage of the Act, was, not the holdings of applicable cases relating to regulation, but the peculiarly mechanistic formula employed principally in 1931 in East Ohio Gas Co. ”

“ Furthermore, East Ohio is not merely moving gas for processing in its own plants. It buys and transports it for sale; there is no further processing of any kind, except for eventual reduction of pressure. This puts East Ohio's transportation more nearly in the category of that which we held to bring oil transportation within the coverage of the Interstate Commerce Act. ”

“ Regardless of whether it might have been wiser and more farseeing statesmanship for Congress to have made such an exception, we should not do so through the interpretative process. There is nothing in the legislative history which authorizes us to interpret away the plain congressional mandate. ”

“ This amendment followed a report of the Commission to Congress pointing out that without amendment the Act vested the Commission with inadequate power to make 'any serious effort to control the unplanned construction of natural-gas pipe lines with a view to conserving one of the country's valuable but exhaustible energy resources.' [8] We hold that the word 'transportation' like the phrase 'interstate commerce' aptly describes the movements of gas in East Ohio's High-pressure pipe lines. ”

“ That this continuous flow of gas from other states to and through East Ohio's high-pressure lines constitutes interstate transportation has been established by numerous previous decisions of this Court. The gas does not cease its interstate journey the instant it crosses the Ohio boundary or enters East Ohio's pipes, even though that Company operates completely within the state where the gas is finally consumed. Respondents do not and cannot claim that their gas is not in interstate commerce. ”

“ Out of their diversity of practice and experience emerge pragmatic tests. What the Federal Power Commission seeks to require of this Ohio gas company, for example, is to revert by accounting methods to emphasis on original cost, a basis which William Jennings Bryan for an earlier generation of progressives eloquently urged this Court to reject in the field of railroad rate-making. ”

“ Justice Brandeis said, 'It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.' New State Ice Co. ”

“ Most of this natural gas is transported into Ohio from Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia through pipe lines of Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Company and of Hope Natural Gas Company, an affiliate of East Ohio. Inside the Ohio boundary these interstate lines connect with East Ohio's large high-pressure lines in which the imported gas, propelled mainly by its own pressure, flows continuously more than 100 miles to East Ohio's local distribution systems. ”

“ It must be remembered that closer than any federal agency to those they regulate and to their customers are the state authorities, whose mechanisms are less cumbersome and whose principles can much more quickly be adjusted to the changing times. ”

“ Nor was this question even at issue in any case cited by the Court in support of its premise. That is not to say that the question was not considered, however. Quite to the contrary, less than two months before passage of the Natural Gas Act, this Court, through the pen of Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, in a case not cited by the Court, declared that such transmission lines were properly within the sphere of state ratemaking powers. Lone Star Gas Co. v. Texas, 304 U.S. 224, 551, 58 S.Ct. ”

“ They have independent and equally important places in the Act. Thus, to adopt respondents' construction would unduly restrict the Commission's power to carry out one of the major policies of the Act. Moreover, the initial interest of Congress in regulation of transportation facilities was reemphasized in 1942 by passage of an amendment to § 7 (c) of the Act broadening the Commission's powers over the construction or extension of pipe lines. ”