Lone Wolf

The Federal Power Commission got a new chairman last week, and private utilities may soon be painfully aware of him. The new appointee of President Truman: Fair Dealing Commissioner Thomas C. Buchanan, 56, successor to Mon C. Wallgren, an old Truman crony who resigned for "personal reasons." Buchanan, a former commissioner of Pennsylvania public utilities, was appointed to FPC in 1948 against the protest of the oil & gas lobby. He had been a stubborn fighter against rate raises, and oil & gas men raised such a row that his confirmation barely squeaked through the Senate.

As a Commissioner, Buchanan opposed the oilmen's favorite piece of legislation, the Kerr bill, which would have exempted gas sold at the wellhead from FPC control. Last year, when FPC ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the prices of gas in the field (TIME, July 30), Buchanan was the lone dissenter. Even in voting for last week's rate increase (see above), he issued a separate opinion arguing that gas producers should not be allowed to put escalator clauses in their contracts with pipeline companies.

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