This case, here on certiorari, involves the proper disposition of a fund accumulated under a stay order issued by the Court of Appeals pending review of a rate order issued by petitioner. That order reduced the rates for natural gas on sales by Interstate Natural Gas Co. to Mississippi River Fuel Corp , Southern Natural Gas Co., and United Gas Pipe Line Co. for resale to Memphis Natural Gas Co., and on sales by Interstate to Memphis. The Court of Appeals sustained the order, 5 Cir., 156 F.2d 949, and we affirmed its judgment, 331 U.S. 682, 67 S.Ct. 1482, 91 L.Ed. 1742.
Interstate deposited in the registry of the court pending review the monthly difference between payments under existing rates and those required under the order of the Commission. Interstate has now moved in the Court of Appeals for a distribution of the fund. The pipe-line companies-Mississippi, Southern, United, and Memphis-claimed the fund and asked that it be distributed to them. Petitioner and certain state and municipal agencies also intervened, opposing distribution to the pipe-line companies and claiming that it should be made to the ultimate consumers of the gas or to such others as may be equitably entitled to it. The Court of Appeals, relying on Central States Electric Co. v. Muscatine, 324 U.S. 138, 65 S.Ct. 565, 89 L.Ed. 801, ordered the fund to be paid to those from whom Interstate wrongfully exacted the payments, viz., the pipe-line companies, without prejudice to such rights as others may have to hold those companies accountable for the amounts involved. 5 Cir., 166 F.2d 796.
First. Here, unlike Central States Electric Co. v. Muscatine, supra, the distributing companies that seek return of the fund created from their payments of the excessive rates are subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Power Commission, since they are natural gas companies engaged in the transportation or sale at wholesale of natural gas in interstate commerce. See Illinois Natural Gas Co. v. Central Illinois Public Service Co., 314 U.S. 498, 62 S.Ct. 384, 86 L.Ed. 371. The claims of these pipeline companies to the fund are therefore determinable solely with reference to federal law, since the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 821, 15 U.S.C. § 717, 15 U.S.C.A. § 717, is designed to regulate the segment of the industry occupied by such distributors. See Interstate Natural Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 331 U.S. 682, 689-690, 67 S.Ct. 1482, 1486, 1487, 91 L.Ed. 1742; Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U.S. 591, 610, 64 S.Ct. 281, 291, 88 L.Ed. 333. We may not therefore sustain the action of the Court of Appeals unless it is clear as a matter of federal law that the pipe-line companies are entitled to the fund.
The basis of the claim stated in their petitions for intervention is that they are entitled to the fund as of right, since it was created by their payments. But we would be unmindful of the purpose of the Act and the responsibility of the federal courts under it, if we so ruled. The aim of the Act was to protect ultimate consumers of natural gas from excessive charges. See Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Co., supra, 320 U.S. at pages 610, 612, 64 S.Ct. at pages 291, 292. They were the intended beneficiaries of rate reductions ordered by the federal commission, though state machinery might have to be invoked to obtain lower rates at the consumer level. The rates charged a wholesaler are part of its costs, reflected in its rate base. Reduction of those costs normally will lead in due course to reduction in its resale rates, unless we are to assume that the passage of the Natural Gas Act was an exercise in futility. It is of course conceivable that a wholesaler might be warranted in keeping all or a part of the rate reduction under the standards of reasonableness prescribed by the Act. But a court would not be warranted in assuming that the rates which have been charged are so low as to be unreasonable. No such presumption attends rates which have been fixed pursuant to rate orders of the Commission. Nor can we make any such presumption as respects rates fixed by the utilities themselves without the compulsion of a rate order. For experience does not indicate that utilities are wont to charge themselves out of business.