(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Board shall lay down, by regulations, the transportation tariffs for common carriers or contract carriers or city or local natural gas distribution network and the manner of determining such tariffs.
     (2) For the purposes of sub-section (1), the Board shall be guided by the following, namely:--
         (a) the factors which may encourage competition, efficiency, economic use of the resources, good performance and optimum investments;
         (b) safeguard the consumer interest and at the same time recovery of cost of transportation in a reasonable manner;
         (c) the principles rewarding efficiency in performance;
         (d) the connected infrastructure such as compressors, pumps, metering units, storage and the like connected to the common carriers or contract carriers;
         (e) benchmarking against a reference tariff calculated based on cost of service, internal rate of return, net present value or alternate mode of transport;
         (f) policy of the Central Government applicable to common carrier, contract carrier and city or local distribution natural gas network.