Opinion ID: 492011
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alleged lack of compliance with Sec. 7(b).

Text: 190 As noted above, the Commission has, in the CD modification provisions, identified circumstances under which pipelines are automatically entitled to abandonment of service--namely, when the customer exercises the election provided. In support of this it has made the necessary finding under Sec. 7(b) that such abandonment serves the public convenience or necessity. 17 CP National and others fault the Commission for failing to make various specific findings said to be subsidiary parts of that conclusion. They cite, for example, Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp. v. FPC, 488 F.2d 1325, 1329-30 (D.C.Cir.1973), cert. denied, 417 U.S. 921, 94 S.Ct. 2629, 41 L.Ed.2d 226 (1974), overturning the Commission's decision to permit certain producers to abandon sales to an interstate pipeline. In that context, the court held that the Commission must study various factors and make a broadly conceived comparison of the needs of the two natural gas systems [the current purchaser and the producers' intended substitute] and the public markets they serve. Id. at 1330 (footnote omitted). 191 The petitioners implicitly assert that the substantive ingredients of the public convenience or necessity are the same regardless of the type of abandonment. This makes no sense. Clearly the substantive concerns relevant to terminations at the option of LDCs are altogether different from those relating to producers' abandonment of their sales to pipelines in a period of acute shortage, as was the case in Transcontinental. 192 Elizabethtown Gas Company derives from Transcontinental the proposition that the Commission cannot wholly defer to private parties' choice. Id. at 1328-29. We see no conflict between that precept and the Commission's action here: nothing in Transcontinental prevents the Commission from identifying circumstances which, when coupled with the purchaser's election, satisfy the public convenience and necessity. 193