Tracking the Oil

Seeking the facts about the Atlantic Seaboard gasoline shortage caused by the transfer of 50 U.S. tankers to Britain, a Senate subcommittee last week heard that 1) there is no shortage yet, 2) any possible shortage will diminish after Christmas, 3) by next April the U.S. may have a tanker surplus.

Big if in this good news: it assumed the U.S. would meanwhile give away no more tankers. But Oil Tsar Harold Ickes had said Britain needed another 100.

Some of the Senators suspected Ickes of ballyhooing the shortage "to foster a war psychology." Serious, dark-haired Ralph K. Davies, Ickes' oil deputy, did his best to make the shortage seem real. His figures: the Atlantic Seaboard will burn 199,900,000 barrels of petroleum products in the next four months, will get only 172,100,000. Deficit: 27,800,000. Stocks now in the East are 72,600,000 barrels--just enough to cover the deficit and leave an irreducible working reserve.

Caught in a cross fire from suspicious Senators, Davies admitted that even the 27,800,000 deficit might not materialize. Tank cars, which he understood to number 18,000, might fill the tanker gap. But the tank cars were elusive. He did not know where they were, whether they were idle, how they could be put to work. Neither Transportation Defense Commissioner Ralph Budd nor American Association of Railroads President John Pelley could tell him. The Senators decided to get hold of Messrs. Budd and Pelley, track the tank cars to their lair.

They got much clearer information on tankers. Informant: Maritime Commission Chairman Emory S. Land. He said the U.S. has 139 tankers under construction (present East Coast fleet: 221). By year's end eleven of these will be in the water, by next April another 14. Better still, the 25 new ships will be so big (16,000 tons average), and so fast (15 knots or better) that they will be able to haul as much oil as the 50 tankers handed to Britain.

Land also pointed to 26 Axis tankers idling in Latin American waters. Some of these tankers could be ready in a week or two, all could be oil-and seaworthy in two months. But he did not know when or whether the U.S. would take over the Axis tankers (Britain already has waived any belligerent claims).

From tankers Land jumped to pipelines, revealed that the Maritime Commission is dead against them. Reason: they take too much steel, take too long to build. As a substitute he suggested reinforced concrete barges. One 14,000-ton tanker pulling such a barge could--after allowing for decreased speed--increase its annual pay load 27%; by pulling two barges, 45%.

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