Famine Closer

Petroleum Coordinator Harold Ickes sent oilmen reeling this week. He asked them to turn over 100 more tankers to the British, 25 of them immediately. With the 50 tankers already turned over (TIME, May 26), that will cut the U.S. coastwise tanker fleet by 40% to 200 vessels. It means the Atlantic seaboard gasoline famine is closer and graver than ever.

Because they can carry oil for one-third pipeline and one-tenth tank-car costs, tankers normally carry 90% of the 1,500,000 bbl. used each day on the Atlantic seaboard. When the first 50 tankers went, oilmen tightened their belts by speedups in tanker service, heavier loading, greater use of pipeline and rail. The loss of 100 more tankers would cut the daily intercoastal tanker haul to less than 600,000 bbl. This is a chasm no stopgap methods can bridge.

Best long-distance answer is pipelines. But each time oilmen push pipelines they crash head on with railroad lobbies. Of the four new pipelines proposed, only one--a 250-mile line between Portland, Me. and Montreal--was under unimpeded construction last week. Congress still stewed over the Cole Bill (granting rights of way to pipelines). If it passes despite railroad opposition, and new pipelines are laid at once, they will still carry no oil before next spring.

To this impasse, Oil Tsar Ickes gave his answer last week: he asked motorists in 16 Atlantic States voluntarily to cut gasoline consumption one-third. To see how voluntary reduction works, Ickes also asked 19 large oil retailers to compile weekly retail-sales reports. Hot-headed Harold Ickes will get even hotter if the figures show the noncompliance everyone expects. Probable upshot: gasoline ration cards (or a reasonable facsimile) by fall.

To oilmen this whole situation is fantastic. Unofficially they think Washington is too easy with the British, that it would pay to check on how efficiently their tankers are being used. Officially, they think the U.S. might look elsewhere for tankers. In a report issued two months ago (TIME, July 7), they pointed to a score of German, Italian and Danish tankers rusting in Latin-American ports. But when the ration cards are handed out, millions of irate motorists may begin shouting for use of these ships.

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