Opinion ID: 351699
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: end-use data

Text: 107 In making its allocations of natural gas to the distributors, El Paso has determined for each the amount of gas consumed within priority categories. To accomplish these calculations, it was necessary to rely on information furnished by the ultimate consumers as to the uses each made of natural gas. Arizona Electric Power Cooperative and the City of Willcox object to that method, especially because, Since these nominations were made after El Paso's customers first suffered curtailment, they may well be tainted by self-serving exaggerations of requirements in higher priorities. (Brief for Petitioners City of Willcox and Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. at 53). The preferable practice, in petitioners' estimation, would be to require El Paso to obtain from each distributor actual data on residential, commercial, and industrial use of the natural gas furnished that distributor, and to subject those figures to cross-examination by competing distributors. 108 As large boiler users with firm contracts under the old scheme, such petitioners fear being reduced from top priority to near lowest priority in almost all of their natural gas allocations. It is expectable, accordingly, that they would like to scrutinize with the utmost care the claimed needs of distributors serving predominantly superior-priority users. But the decision of the Commission being challenged here is of the type to which courts customarily accord a good deal of respect. It is not as though the Commission wishes El Paso to proceed without any data at all. If it had so ordered, that might have been so disruptive to the effective functioning of the Act as to have constituted an error of law. At the least, substantial evidence might well have been found lacking. 16 But the Commission has here merely chosen a method of obtaining the data necessary to implement its end-use curtailment plan. Absent a strong showing of unworkability, methodology is best left to an enforcing agency's own determination. 109 In the United Gas Pipe Line curtailment plan, reviewed in Louisiana, supra, the Commission did suspend the effective date of the end-use plan in order to obtain its own measurements of natural gas utilization by priority category. United Gas and El Paso could be distinguished on the basis of the high number of complaints received by the Commission in the former and, a related point, the relative novelty of the proposed plan compared with the plan that was already in force in United. However, on a matter of logistics rather than a rule of law, or even an agency's interpretive policy, the need to enforce consistency is much reduced. It is sufficient to hold that the Commission has taken a position that is not arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion in the El Paso curtailment plan. The position is that distributors' nominations will be presumptively accurate. 17 Should petitioners single out specific evidence of substantial abuse, where the nominations of natural gas use were fraudulently or negligently different from the priority classifications to which the natural gas was actually being put, then the Commission would be required to reconsider whether the nomination procedure was reliable. 18 At an earlier part of this opinion, we have relied (to the benefit of the petitioners) on the presumption the Commission's orders would not be evaded, and that it was impermissible for the designation of particular end use to turn on the unsubstantiated expectation of fraud. 19 This same presumption must operate here. 110 Also, any new program of estimation is likely to involve some inaccuracy. Given the wide range of consumers involved, the extensive geographical areas where they are located, and the magnitude of the operation, such result would be inevitable. The Commission, in its December 24, 1975, order, refused AEPCO's request to challenge SoCal gas nominations, admitting, Although the data supplied with respect to SoCal is deficient, there is presently neither an allegation nor any evidence of error or impropriety with regard to its data or the data of PG & E. (Brief for Respondent at Appendix D, p. 11). This court agrees with the Commission that (i)n the absence of such an allegation or evidence, we find no basis for requiring an investigatory hearing. . . .  (Id.) 20 It is no error to proceed under the assumptions that the laws against fraud are being obeyed, 21 and that the possibility of innocent errors may be weighed against the delays and costs of detailed hearings.