Oil's Week

In response to a Senate resolution the Federal Trade Commission last week reported that the oil code had cost U. S. motorists $160,550,000. In 272 cities covered by the survey up to Jan. 31, gasoline prices had risen an average of 1.04-c- a gal. since July 1, a month before the code was signed. The Commission also reported that combined State and Federal taxes, which have nothing to do with the code, averaged 5.14-c- a gal., or $700,000,000 annually. Highest State taxes were in Florida and Tennessee (7-c-), lowest in Connecticut. District of Columbia, Missouri and Rhode Island (2-c-).

Other oil news of the week:

Drillers of Cleveland Petroleum Corp., burrowing in the apple orchard of U. S. Senator John G. Townsend Jr. and partner near Bridgeville, Del., struck oil. They packed up some samples, drove co town. One look at the sticky, black brew was enough to send real estate men scurrying to their telephones. Mortgage-ridden farmers soon heard tales of fabulous land prices. One who had been trying to sell his plot for a few hundred dollars was offered $1,500. "I wouldn't take $4,000 for it now," said he. Storekeepers got ready to pitch hot dog stands near the orchard, talked of building a hotel as a state-wide oil rush seemed imminent. But Cleveland Petroleum Corp. had quietly leased most of the land around the orchard, shut the public out.

Cleveland was still in the throes of a retail gasoline strike. Two thousand filling station operators of the major oil companies walked out three weeks ago, leaving Clevelanders to depend upon some 700 independents for their entire supply. In one day 27 doctors complained that they had run out of gasoline while making calls. Last week panic-stricken motorists rushed to filling stations with cans and jugs for extra supplies as the independents threatened to stop pumping too. Promptly at midnight 689 independents shut down, did not reopen.

Stations across the county border did a boomtime business. The city hastily set up four emergency stations for doctors, nurses, food delivery. When the labor policy board of the Petroleum Administration failed to get the companies to agree to its proposals, Secretary Ickes stepped in with a six-point program providing for arbitration. This time the companies accepted but the unions postponed decision, awaiting clarification of the Ickes proposals on wages and union recognition. At the week's end the four city-operated stations were Cleveland's only source of supply.

Independence, Kans. is the home of Prairie Oil & Gas and Prairie Pipe Line which Harry F. Sinclair merged with his Sinclair Consolidated Corp. in 1932. Citizens of Independence still resent the merger, feel that onetime Prairie Chairman William Samuel ("Sam") Fitzpatrick "sold out." Last week resentment boiled into a law suit when the onetime secretary of Prairie Oil and six stockholders filed a petition in a Federal court to dissolve Consolidated Oil, appoint a receiver for its $375,000,000 assets. The suit charged fraud, misrepresentation and manipulation in the merger with Prairie Oil, accused "Sam" Fitzpatrick of accepting $449,000 from Mr. Sinclair "without investment or service on his part." During a Senate investigation last November it was revealed that Mr. Fitzpatrick, a small-town Kansas lawyer who used to play in a Sedan, Kans. band, received a 2 1/2% cut in the $12,000,000 profits of a Sinclair Consolidated stockmarket pool before the Prairie merger had been arranged.

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