Opinion ID: 531196
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Authority on the OCS.

Text: 127 The Commission also fails adequately to support its authority to require credits for gas transported on the OCS. In Order No. 509, the Commission interpreted Secs. 5(e) and 5(f) of the OCSLA, 43 U.S.C. Sec. 1334(e)-(f), to require open access on that portion of any pipeline lying on the OCS. FERC Stats. & Regs., Regs. Preambles (1982-1987) (CCH) p 30,842 (1988), reh'g denied, 46 FERC (CCH) p 61,177 (1989). FERC's only response to the Producers' argument that the Commission cannot make conditional the access that the statute guarantees them is that [t]here is no basis for interpreting this requirement to bar a regulatory provision (i.e., crediting) that ... is consistent with essentially the same nondiscriminatory requirement in the Commission's open-access regulations. FERC Brief at 36 n. 26. 128 The Commission's point seems to be that if crediting is consistent with open access as established by regulation, then it is equally consistent with open access as established by statute. This implicit reliance upon the principle of transitivity works only if it is also true that the two sources of open access can be equated; the whole of the Producers' point, however, is that their right of access exists by virtue of a higher, not an equal, authority; thus, it arguably cannot be qualified by the Commission. If, on remand, the Commission determines that the crediting requirements should apply to OCS pipelines, then in order to justify its assertion of power, it must set out a legal theory that is responsive to the Producers' argument. 129