Independents' Day

Oklahoma's Senator Bob Kerr is an oil-rich Democrat who makes no bones about sticking up for the oilmen's interests on Capitol Hill. Last year, he touched off one of the biggest fights of the year with a bill to exempt independent natural gas producers (i.e., those who own no interstate pipelines) from control of the Federal Power Commission. Bob Kerr won his battle in Congress, but suffered defeat at the hands of old friend Harry Truman, who vetoed the Kerr bill.

But last week Bob Kerr and the oilmen got what they wanted--thanks chiefly to another old Truman friend and fishing partner. FPC Chairman Mon Wallgren, former governor of Washington and Truman's hand-picked candidate for the FPC job, announced that FPC had decided that independent gas producers were not within its jurisdiction after all. The circumstances surrounding the announcement were odd: FPC, which usually takes weeks to hand down a decision, got this one out nine days after oral hearings were over on a test case concerning Phillips Petroleum Co., world's biggest natural gas producer. Chairman Wallgren said he made his announcement, though the written decision may not be ready for months, to correct "garbled information."

In the hearings, FPC's lawyers argued that Phillips' gas prices should be under the same control that FPC has over the pipeline companies. Phillips replied that its gas, when sold, was not an interstate commerce and that natural gas prices were so low that FPC control was not needed. It argued that the threat of FPC control was checking expansion of the gas industry; oil companies were capping their gas wells instead of going into natural gas. Some oilmen also feared that FPC might pull the whole petroleum industry under its control as a public utility.

Despite FPC's decision, the gas fight is not over. The commission's verdict will almost certainly be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the big natural gas consuming cities of the Midwest.

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