Cite as: 519 U. S. 278 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
by the McCarran Act)]." Panhandle-Indiana, supra, at 521.
And Congress once again acknowledged the important role of the States in regulating intrastate transportation and distribution of natural gas in 1953 when, in the wake of a decision of this Court permitting the FPC to regulate intrastate gas transportation by LDC's, see FPC v. East Ohio Gas Co., 338 U. S. 464 (1950), Congress amended the NGA to "leav[e] jurisdiction" over "companies engaged in the distribution" of natural gas "exclusively in the States, as always has been intended." S. Rep. No. 817, 83d Cong., 1st Sess., 1-2 (1953); see 15 U. S. C. § 717(c).
For 40 years, the complementary federal regulation of the interstate market and congressionally approved state regulation of the intrastate gas trade thus endured unchanged in any way relevant to this case. The resulting market structure virtually precluded competition between LDC's and other potential suppliers of natural gas for direct sales to consumers, including large industrial consumers. The simplicity of this dual system of federal and state regulation began to erode in 1978, however, when Congress first encouraged interstate pipelines to provide transportation services to end users wishing to ship gas,9 and thereby moved toward providing a real choice to those consumers who were able to buy gas on the open market and were willing to take it free of state-created obligations to the buyer. The upshot of congressional and regulatory developments over the next 15 years was increasing opportunity for a consumer in that class to choose between gas sold by marketers and gas bundled with rights and benefits mandated by state regulators as sold by LDC's. But amidst such changes, two things remained the same throughout the period involved in this case. Con-9 For a more complete description of these changes in federal regulatory policy, and the relevant modifications of Ohio regulation of local utilities that they prompted, see supra, at 283-285.
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