288
Opinion of the Court
cannot justify Ohio's differential treatment of these in-state and out-of-state entities. Although the claim is not that the Ohio tax scheme distinguishes in express terms between in-state and out-of-state entities, GMC argues that by granting the tax exemption solely to LDC's, which are in fact all located in Ohio, the State has "favor[ed] some in-state commerce while disfavoring all out-of-state commerce," Brief for Petitioner 16. That is, because the favored entities are all located within the State, "the tax exemption did not need to be drafted explicitly along state lines in order to demonstrate its discriminatory design," Amerada Hess Corp. v. Director, Div. of Taxation, N. J. Dept. of Treasury, 490 U. S. 66, 76 (1989). Assessing these arguments requires an understanding of the historical development of the contemporary retail market for natural gas, to which we referred before and now turn in greater detail.
B
Since before the Civil War, gas manufactured from coal and other commodities had been used for lighting purposes, and of course it was understood that natural gas could be used the same way. See Dorner, Initial Phases of Regulation of the Gas Industry, in 1 Regulation of the Gas Industry §§ 2.03-2.06 (American Gas Assn. 1996) (hereinafter Dorner). By the early years of this century, areas in "proximity to the gas field[s]," West v. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 221 U. S. 229, 246 (1911), did use natural gas for fuel, but it was not until the 1920's that the development of high-tensile steel and electric welding permitted construction of high-pressure pipelines to transport natural gas from gas fields for distant consumption at relatively low cost. Pierce 53. By that time, the States' then-recent experiments with free market competition in the manufactured gas and electricity industries had dramatically underscored the need for comprehensive regulation of the local gas market. Companies supplying manufactured gas proliferated in the latter half of the 19th century
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