John Marshall Harlan II

“ No more is necessary to give full meaning to all the provisions of the Act: consistent with this, § 4 (d) means simply that no change neither a unilateral change to an ex parte rate nor an agreed-upon change to a contract-can be made by a natural gas company without the proper notice to the Commission. Hence there is nothing in the structure or purpose of the Act from which we can infer the right, not otherwise possessed and nowhere expressly given by the Act, of natural gas companies unilaterally to change their contracts. ”

“ Recognizing the need these circumstances create for individualized arrangements between natural gas companies and distributors, the Natural Gas Act permits the relations between the parties to be established initially by contract, the protection of the public interest being afforded by supervision of the individual contracts, which to that end must be filed with the Commission and made public. ”

“ The vast number of retail transactions of railroads made policing of individual transactions administratively impossible; effective regulation could be accomplished only by requiring compliance with a single schedule of rates applicable to all shippers. On the other hand, only a relatively few wholesale transactions are regulated by the Natural Gas Act and these typically require substantial investment in capacity and facilities for the service of a particular distributor. ”

“ From our conclusion that the Natural Gas Act gives a natural gas company no power to change its contracts unilaterally, it follows that the new schedule filed by United was a nullity insofar as it purported to change the rate set by its contract with Mobile and that the contract rate remained the only lawful rate. ”