It was deregulated back in the 1970s, which brought out vast supplies causing utilities to substitute gas for oil and eventually break OPEC.
I don’t see that kind of supply response lurking today.
The Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978
In November of 1978, at the peak of the natural gas supply shortages, Congress enacted legislation known as the Natural Gas Policy Act (NGPA), as part of broader legislation known as the National Energy Act (NEA). Realizing that those price controls that had been put in place to protect consumers from potential monopoly pricing had now come full circle to hurt consumers in the form of natural gas shortages, the federal government sought through the NGPA to revise the federal regulation of the sale of natural gas. Essentially, this act had three main goals:
- Creating a single national natural gas market
- Equalizing supply with demand
- Allowing market forces to establish the wellhead price of natural gas
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