What is an Intrastate Pipeline?

U.S. natural gas pipelines that are wholly contained within a single state. As a result, said pipelines are not subject to the rules and regulations of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but rather to those determined by each individual state. Those state rules tend to allow much more opaqueness in the marketplace, since the electronic bulletin boards (EBBs) of intrastate systems are not required to be open access to the public at large. That lack of federal oversight also allows intrastate pipelines to hold back a portion of their system capacity to buy and sell gas in more of a merchant / marketing function, where they may buy gas at the beginning of their pipe at index and sell it at the tail-end for index plus a premium.