Lastest with the Mostest

With a twist of a pipeline valve outside Seattle one day last week, Seattle's Mayor Gordon Clinton and Mayor George Culmbach of Everett, Wash, linked their cities' kitchens to natural-gas wells on the Colorado-New Mexico border 1,488 miles away. For the Northwest cities that received natural gas for the first time this month, the 18-m.p.h. surge of fuel from the San Juan Basin was as momentous as the first whirring of dynamos at Grand Coulee Dam in 1941. Long hobbled by power shortages, the Northwest in another year will be tapping a gas supply equivalent to 15% of U.S. reserves, anticipates an industrial boom comparable to the South's postwar growth.

The Northwest, last major region in the U.S. to be reached by pipeline, has been waiting six years to cook with gas. After a two-year search for reserves to supply the region, Houston Pipeline Builder Ray Fish battled the Federal Power Commission for two more years (TIME, June 28, 1954) to win permission for his $230 million Pacific Northwest line. Once started, Fish's Scenic Inch raced faster, farther, through more rugged terrain than any other U.S. pipeline.

"And Some for Chicago." Over mountains and under rivers, from Colorado's 8,000-ft. Douglas Pass to the jagged canyons of Washington's Cascades, 10,000 pipeline workers over the past 15 months blasted and burrowed at the rate of 170 miles a month, 55 miles faster than the pace set by Fish when he built the 1,837-mile Texas-New York Transcontinental line in 1951. Crews worked in 35DEG below weather last winter, the Northwest's coldest in 50 years. With 2,500 miles of mainline and feeder pipe, Fish's Pacific Northwest is the world's biggest gas pipeline.

Next November, Pacific Northwest will also become an international pipeline. Hooking into Canada's half-completed $90 million Westcoast Transmission Co. line at Sumas, Wash., the Scenic Inch will draw 300 million cu. ft. of gas daily into the U.S. from the Alberta-British Columbia Peace River field. Thus assured of virtually limitless supplies at either end of the line, the $363 million in lines in 1957 will deliver more thermal energy than all the Northwest's hydroelectric dams, and at less cost than gas in New York. Ultimately, says Fish, the line may carry 2 billion cu. ft. daily, enough "to furnish the western half of the U.S.--and send some east to Chicago as well."

"Like Whisky." The big pipe, now delivering more than 100 million cu. ft. of gas a day, has already lighted a flame under the Northwest's economy. Utility companies have spent $20 million to convert to natural gas, and will lay out another $100 million by 1961. Consumers are expected to buy $100 million worth of new gas appliances. Washington Natural Gas Co. estimates its revenues will double by 1960.

The biggest boost to the region will come from heavy industrial users, many of whom are switching from more costly oil or limited hydroelectric power. Aluminum, glass, cement, ammonia and paper plants have already signed up for all the industrial gas the new pipeline can deliver in its first year. Cheap, abundant gas will also attract many other industries that have shunned the fuel-short Northwest. In Washington and Oregon, which will get more than 50% of the pipeline's capacity, manufacturers last week were discussing plans for five petrochemical plants, an anhydrous ammonia factory and half a dozen other industries. Said one executive: "The Pacific Coast is going forward. The Northwest's power advantages, like whisky, will only increase with age."

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