Regulate Texas gas pipelines

Under Texas law, pipeline operations contained within the state are supposed to operate in a free market, with competition keeping prices down. But the Bloomberg investigation revealed that the market often lacks competition, which leads to pricing that some industry players described as “excessively punitive.”

“It’s authorized monopoly abuse. There’s no other way to get around it,” former Electric Reliability Council of Texas watchdog Beth Garza said. “If there’s only one provider of a key service and there’s no limit on what that provider can charge for their product, that provider is going to profit-maximize by as much as they can get away with.”