Heat for the East

New hope came to householders along the Eastern Seaboard who have been shivering over grim predictions of fuelless days and heatless homes next winter. The Government--a year too late--finally gave orders for a pipeline last week.

Everybody had Harold Ickes to thank, and not many thought to do it. Oilmen had swooned in 1941 when "Horrible Harold" was appointed Petroleum Coordinator for National Defense. One Tulsa tycoon had growled: "Ickes is captain of our souls. My day is absolutely ruined." But it was Ickes last summer who took up the crusade for the pipeline which they had all futilely talked about.

He helped rout the railroads, who squawked about granting needed rights-of-way. There were some practical objections to a pipeline, but Ickes went right ahead. His first scheme was a project from Southwestern oilfields to Philadelphia and New York, to cost $70,000,000. The since-defunct SPAB figured that the 430,000 tons of steel required were needed more in ships and tanks.

Try, Try Again. Early this year hopeful Harold Ickes tried again, again had his face pushed in. But with the transfer of some 300 tankers to war service, and the East Coast sub sinkings, oil reserves on the Eastern Seaboard dropped 2,000,000 bbl. a week. Mr. Ickes started digging up and relocating old lines, using second-hand pipe to improve a vastly inadequate system. In May he went to WPB with another plea for steel allocations. There were conferences. WPBoss Donald Nelson emerged from lunch at the White House to declare with finality: "The pipeline is out unless you want to give up planes and tanks." But not so many laughed at Ickes now--he had advocated building the line in the days before the situation was critical.

The Need. The East Coast oil situation was serious. The oil industry estimated average essential daily needs at 1,297,000 bbl., figured the East was going to be 115,000 bbl. short. "Essential" meant just that, even meant cutting down 169,000 bbl. a day, "which could only be eliminated at severe consumer hardship." Something had to give. Something did. It was WPB.

Last week Nelson signed an order allocating a trifling 125.000 tons of steel tubing for a 24-in. pipeline from Longview, Tex. to Salem, Ill. The cost: $35,000,000. Capacity: 250,000 bbl. a day.

The East could not look forward to completion of the line before December. Mr. Ickes' pipeline did not mean the end of gasoline rationing-not by a pipeful. It would not even bring oil stocks up to what industry called "a reasonably safe level." But homes, factories, schools, office buildings were a lot more certain to get fuel oil for heat next winter.

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