Explaining a paradox: the Alberta-California natural gas trade dispute

For over 3 years the Alberta government and the California Public Utilities Commission engaged in a bitter dispute over the future of the Alberta-California natural gas trade. This article examines how both sides sought to use their regulatory authority to control the substance of gas trade restructuring. It assesses the dispute as an exercise in deregulatory policymaking and suggests the need for increased study of the role and motivations of subnational regulatory actors.
In November 1991 the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) shocked the government of Alberta and the province's natural gas producers when it attempted to impose a new set of trading [...]