Oral history transcript, Joseph C. Swidler, interview 3 (III), 7/26/1988, by Michael L. Gillette

The effort to reduce wholesale utility rates in a way that would benefit the consumer; jurisdiction and fairness of earnings issues; how often to inspect power companies between rate cuts; regulation to bring rates down but still allow for company profit; the Colton case involving Southern California Edison; the Narragansett Electric case; other power outages in addition to the Northeast U.S. blackout while Swidler was chairman of the Federal Power Commission (FPC); the March 1965 natural gas accident in Natchitoches, Louisiana; the creation of a pipeline safety agency; efforts to replace old pipelines; natural gas rates; the industry's entitlement to a fair return on capital prudently invested in the artifacts of the industry; depreciation and the importance of whether a company is organized vertically or horizontally; pipeline demand charges and commodity charges; pipeline rate case backlog; the interim rate system used until permanent rates for the producers could be calculated; pipeline refunds that were required to be paid to distributors; publicity to encourage distributors to pass along refund money to the consumers; precedent that led Swidler to believe he and the FPC could move forward with area rate-making; the hearing examiner's, or administrative law judge's, work in deciding the FPC's cases; Seymour Wenner; the questionnaire FPC distributed to obtain data from the gas producers; hearings in connection with Wenner's two-rate system for flowing gas and new gas; the expansion of natural gas use; settling on a price that was high enough to encourage future drilling; the commission's practice of writing a formal opinion in response to examiner's recommendations; problems with intrastate pipeline regulation; the allowables system in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma; the impracticality of individual rates; area rates and the Nebbia case versus national rates.