Court Opinion

ID: 9443537
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:24:18.386051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:31.922376
License: Public Domain

WOODBURY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I quite agree that for the reasons stated by Chief Judge MAGRUDER Congress did not intend to- give the Commission power to issue temporary certificates without notice or hearing authorizing the construction of wholly new natural gas lines to serve wholly new regions. But Algonquin is not asking for a temporary certificate authorizing it to build a wholly new line, and the area it seeks to serve has already been determined by the Commission to be in need of an adequate-supply of natural gas.
Algonquin virtually completed its line-under the authority of its permanent certifi*343cate. All that now remains to he done to put the line in operation is to connect it up, which requires only two or three welds taking a few days time and the expenditure of a relatively insignificant amount of money.
It is true that the southern New England communities involved have not yet actually heen supplied with natural gas. But spokesmen for competitive fuels and competing interests have already had their day before the Commission, and have lost out. The Commission has decided that southern New England needs an adequate supply of natural gas, and Algonquin, before its permanent certificate was revoked, had for all practical intents and purposes completed its line to supply that need. It is now certain, therefore, that the southern New England communities involved will have natural gas, for it is inconceivable that at this late day the Commission will reverse its position and decide not to issue a permanent certificate to anyone authorizing the transmission of natural gas to those communities. In consequence competing fuels are out as far as the southern New England market is concerned, either in the immediate future if we tell the Commission it has the power to issue the temporary certificate asked for, or at some later date when the Commission issues its order in the presently pending proceeding for a permanent certificate. Thus the purpose of the statutory provision under consideration, as disclosed by its legislative history, would not be thwarted by holding that the Commission had power to give the relief requested by Algonquin.
Moreover, if the litigation in the Third Circuit had consumed only a week or ten days more time, Algonquin would have actually had its line in operation by the time the certificate under which it built the line became a dead letter, and in that situation I think the Commission clearly would have power under the statute to issue a temporary certificate permitting Algonquin to continue to use its line for the time being “to assure maintenance of adequate service,” assuming, of course, a case of emergency.
It seems to me that, if we can, we should avoid a construction of the statute which makes its application depend upon so fortuitous a matter of timing. And I think it would be entirely proper for us to do so for the considerations briefly outlined above.
I would say that Algonquin’s line being now to- all intents and purposes complete, and competing fuels all but displaced, no violation of the statutory purpose as disclosed by its legislative history would result from our construing the statutory language broadly, and holding that the Commission has power to issue a certificate authorizing Algonquin to use its line temporarily “to assure maintenance of adequate service” in the area, if it should find that the local gas companies in that area were unable adequately to- supply their customers because in anticipation of natural gas they have failed to make arrangements assuring a supply of artificial gas during the months to come. In short, in the peculiar circumstances of this particular case, I would not read the phrase above quoted with the words “natural gas” inserted before the word “service,” but would interpolate only the word “gas.”