Fueling Up For Winter

Even if it's another cold one, the U.S. is ready

Munsingwear Inc. of Minneapolis increased its production of men's long underwear this year by 50%--and still has orders for more warm snugglies than it can make. Big-city grocery stores are selling boxes of coal for the first time in years. Flannel sheets are in demand as Christmas gifts. The ten Lazarus Department Stores in Ohio and Indiana are selling electric blankets at a fast pace. Says Lazarus Vice President Leonard Daloia: "Folks haven't forgotten last year."

Neither have the nation's utilities and industries. They have taken a variety of steps to avoid the fuel shortages, plant closings and transportation tie-ups that made the bitterly cold winter of 1976-77 a national hardship to remember--and to learn from. Utilities have increased their storage capacity for natural gas: the South Jersey Gas Co., for example, this summer added 1.2 billion cu. ft., an increase of 30%. New York's Consolidated Edison Co. has arranged to buy synthetic gas as a backup in case pipeline deliveries of natural gas from Texas prove insufficient. Many utilities say they can handle a winter 10% colder than normal with almost no service reductions.

Even if there are service cutoffs, Northern utilities figure the deprivations would be limited to those industrial customers who can readily switch to other fuel. This year there are more companies with backup sources: International Harvester, for example, has successfully drilled its own gas wells in Ohio.

Last year, coal stored in railroad cars and silos froze into lumps that were too big to use. Never again, vow the people at Chessie System, the nation's largest coal hauler. Chessie has built three "galloping Gerties": huge steel vibrating fingers that loosen coal in one car every three minutes. Other railroads now have similar contraptions. To reduce the possible impact of a threatened United Mine Workers strike, industries and utilities increased their coal inventories during the autumn months.

The most important--and unpredictable--factor, of course, is the weather itself. New England has had an unseasonably warm November, while last year's was "the coldest in 30 years," says the New England Fuel Institute's Charle Burkhardt. Unfortunately, that help may be ending. Experts at the U.S. National Weather Service reckon that the odds are 4 to 3 that the nation's Northeastern quarter will be colder than normal through January. But for the Western half of the nation, above-normal temperatures are predicted--at the same odds.

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