Oil: Crisis & Hope

A cold wind whipped down the valley. The spotlights on the cranes picked out the jagged chunks of ice floating down the muddy Mississippi. At a lonely spot below Cape Girardeau, Mo. there was important work to be done. It was 4 a.m., but time and the weather mattered little. As the creaking cranes slowly dropped a huge tube of steel through the water down to the soggy river bed, a shout went up. The job was done.

Thus, early one morning last week, the world's biggest (24-inch) oil pipeline was finished--550 miles from Longview, Tex. to Norris City, Ill. It had been a mean, dirty, backbreaking, six-month job. But the thousands of men who had dug the ditch and laid the pipe and swabbed its insides clean had given the pipe an affectionate name--the "Big Inch."

Even before the last link of Big Inch was completed, the motors were started on the pumps at Longview and the thick, black crude oil had begun the slow, oozing (three miles per hour) journey north and eastward. Some ten days later it would reach the storage tanks at Norris City; from there tank cars would soon haul it to the Eastern Seaboard. By next June, when the second section of the line is completed--from Norris City to Philadelphia and Bayway, N.J.--Eastern refineries will be able to draw oil from far-off Texas as easily as a housewife gets water from the kitchen faucet. And the spigot will pour forth 300,000 barrels a day (more than one-fifth of the need of the Eastern area).

Cold Comfort. This was the hope and promise that warmed the citizens of the 17 oil-rationed Eastern states as they shivered in winter's coldest weather. But hope was nearly all they had to keep them warm: the fuel-oil shortage had at last reached the crest of the crisis.

It had mounted steadily since last October, the last month when the reduced supply still exceeded the already rationed demand. In November came the U.S. invasion of North Africa and a sudden, inordinate drain on Eastern oil stocks; as the North African champaign became more complicated, the drain increased. Zero and sub-zero weather compounded the crisis. Last week some strong emergency measures were necessary. Harold L. Ickes, Petroleum Administrator for War, banned delivery of gasoline by tank car to the East, ordered the cars to haul only fuel oil. Three days earlier he and OPA cut the fuel oil ration for non-heating purposes by 40%.

This helped, but the greatest comfort for Eastern citizens, even though it was cold comfort, was that the worst month of winter was now over and that by March the supply would finally once again meet the demand (see chart). There were still 40 days to go. They might be troubled days; but spring would bring relief.

The Rolling Cars. That the crisis was not worse was due almost entirely to the railroads, which in the last months had performed superhuman tasks. All through the fall and winter the men in the cabs of locomotives, in the lonely switchmen's shacks, in the dispatchers' offices had labored and sweated with the job of keeping the long lines of tank cars rolling. They had rolled so well that rail deliveries to the East were boosted almost 50,000 barrels a day. Even then, deliveries were some 200,000 barrels a day below needs.

Big Inch & Brothers. For long-term relief the hope lay in Big Inch and other lines like it. Big Inch, when finished, will be an engineering and construction monument. It will tunnel 1,400 miles under eight states and 20 rivers and surmount the rolling Alleghenies. Now building in the South is an extension of Big Inch's smaller (maximum 11 inch) brother, the Plantation Line, which by June will stretch from Baton Rouge to Richmond. Oilmen figure that still another such line would be needed if both war and civilian needs are to be fulfilled.

For the armed forces will continue to drain oil from Eastern stocks--Eastern ports are 1,250 miles nearer to North Africa than the oil ports of Texas. Although the outlook for civilians will temporarily brighten in March, for the duration of the war it still is black.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.