Indictments Day by Day

Except to motorists, it was not news when the service stations around Los Angeles year ago started a price war which brought gasoline down to 7 1/2-c- per gal. As common to the industry as red-handled pumps, the price slashing is still going on. But it was news indeed last week when a Federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted and ordered arrested the top executives in two of the biggest oil companies on the Pacific Coast for aiding and abetting the price war and for violating the Oil Code.

The defendants: Standard Oil Co. of California; Associated Oil Co. of California (controlled by Tidewater); three alleged subsidiaries; Standard's President Kenneth R. Kingsbury. who is a member of the oil code's Planning and Coordinating Committee, Vice President Oscar Sutro. nine other officers and directors; Associated's President William F. Humphrey. 15 other officers and directors, including Paul Shoup. vice chairman of Southern Pacific Co. Indictments were based on no less than 185 counts for Associated, 149 for Standard, including one for each day's violation of the oil code after it was signed Aug. 19. The charges: 1) Standard Oil of California secretly controls two small companies. Signal Oil & Gas of Delaware and Signal Oil & Gas of California, while Associated controls smallish Seaside Oil Co.; 2 ) these subsidiaries, while posing as competitors of their parent companies, conspired to sell Standard and Associated gasoline to the public under a different brand at drastically reduced prices in order to squeeze out independents. Terming this ''the most vicious price cutting war in oil history," the grand jurors carefully fixed $1,000 bail for defendants--after they are arrested. If convicted under the oil code they face $500 fine on each count. Standard's total fine would be $1,600,000, Associated's $2,200,000. In Washington day later it was learned that Oil Administrator Ickes disapproved of the jury's action, did not think the oil code had been violated.

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