New antitrust issues in a deregulated environment: access to pipelines

The deregulated environment of the Natural Gas Policy Act, (NGPA) will introduce new antitrust issues, one issue of particular concern and difficulty being access and utilization of gas transmission and distribution facilities. The authors disagree with the tendency to use the bottleneck monopoly/essential facility doctrine to suggest that access is required by the antitrust laws. Current trends in judicial and economic analysis of refusals to deal by monopolists supports the view that nonpredatory denials of access, based on such legitimate business considerations as efficiency and profitability, are appropriate and consistent with both antitrust policy and the competitive purposes of industry deregulation. 80 references.