High Ride for Gas

A rich mixture of gas and politics filled the corridors, the cloakrooms and the chambers on Capitol Hill last week. The Kerr bill was swirling through Congress.

The bill was the work of Freshman Senator Robert Kerr, a big burly man with a friendly eye and the handshake of a life-insurance salesman. A former governor of Oklahoma, he is also a millionaire oil and gas producer, and almost from the day he got to Capitol Hill, in 1949, he had been pushing this legislation.

Bob Kerr's bill was designed to straighten out a confused situation in the Southwest oilfields. After a Supreme Court decision in 1947, some members of the Federal Power Commission thought that FPC had the right to say what natural-gas producers could charge interstate pipeline operators for gas. Still not too sure of its authority, FPC had not yet clamped on price regulation. But so-called "independent" producers* lived in dread of the day when FPC would move in. The Kerr bill would specifically exempt gas producers from such FPC control.

Pipelines & Price Boosts. If the bill did not have open White House support, it had, according to assurances in the cloakroom, tacit White House approval. But sudden opposition, mainly from Democratic ranks, covered the Administration with confusion.

Illinois' Freshman Paul Douglas led a band of Northern and Eastern Senators in the attack. Said Douglas: "So great is the demand for natural gas . . . that pipelines are being laid frantically down into the Southwest. In the past two years more than 18,000 miles of pipeline have been authorized. Natural gas will shortly pour into the North Atlantic and New England states and into the states of the South Atlantic and Middle West. It is a seller's market and the big gas and oilmen are riding high."

Douglas and others estimated that unregulated prices in this fabulously expanding industry could result in price boosts of at least $100 million a year.

While Douglas talked, Oilman Kerr chuffed worriedly about the Senate floor like a yard engine rounding up a string of freight cars, whispering counterarguments and buttonholing members. When the time came for a vote, Kerr had collected his string of cars: 28 Democrats and 16 Republicans. Douglas mustered 16 Democrats and 22 Republicans and it was not enough.

"Horse Thieves" & Bounties. In the House the fight was closer, the debate more fiery. When the bill was called up, Michigan's Democrat John Dingell rose to the attack. "Horse thieves have been hanged for lesser crimes," he shouted. Cried Ohio's Democrat Robert Grosser: "The bounty of the Creator is being grabbed for a privileged few."

Texas' Sam Rayburn, some of whose best friends are oilmen, finally had to take the floor. "I don't think in view of my record in this House," he said solemnly, "I could be accused of having any great desire to serve the interests over the people." Dingell tried to interrupt him. "Now, John, I'm making this speech," said Sam. The bill, Sam declared blandly, would not raise the price of natural gas by "one red penny."

Although the measure was first defeated, four members (three Republicans and one Democrat) asked to be allowed to switch their votes. "How much did you get?" someone yelled from the floor. The final count: 176 aye, 174 nay. Bob Kerr whistled off with his legislation, apparently confident that Harry Truman would sign it and make it law.

Speaker Rayburn, who makes speeches infrequently so that they will be regarded as an occasion, spoke a second time on the. House floor during the week. This time he was trying to save the President's omnibus foreign-aid bill from being amended to shreds. "Do we want friends in the world?" he asked. "Do we need friends . . .? Suppose the democracies of Europe do not stand up, and they are folded within the iron curtain, where will the next war be fought?"

After his ten-minute speech, Administration forces defeated an amendment to earmark $1 billion of EGA funds for mandatory spending on U.S. crops; they also beat down the Irish amendment (see below). The economy bloc did succeed in cutting $250 million from the Administration's proposed EGA appropriation, and pruned $20 million from the President's Point Four program. The foreign-aid bill as it finally passed the House totaled $3.1 billion: EGA, $2.85 billion; Korean aid, $100 million; China and contiguous areas, $100 million; Arab refugee relief in Palestine, $27.4 million; Point Four, $25 million. Next stop: the Senate.

*So-called because they have no connection with any interstate gas pipelines. Some well-known "independents": Shell Oil Co., Phillips Petroleum Co. and Sun Oil Co. Some well-knojwn parerrts of other "independents": Standard Oil (N.J.), Standard Oil (Ind.) and Sooony-Vacuum.

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