A Rivalry for Power

Whiplashed by the embargo and leaping oil prices, President Nixon last December set up what became the Federal Energy Administration to centralize U.S. energy policymaking. The centralization lasted little longer than the crisis. Almost as soon as last winter's gasoline lines disappeared, the question of who should coordinate energy policy began to breed baroque rivalries--and now, with the Ford Administration in control, three potent Washington figures are scrapping for leadership. They are:

> Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton. A longtime Republican Party professional, Morton was overshadowed during the Nixon presidency but has re-emerged as a power under Ford. Before FEA was created, energy problems tended to gravitate toward Interior.

> Treasury Secretary William Simon. The unchallenged energy czar when he headed FEA through its first five months, Simon supposedly relinquished the job when he moved to Treasury. But he thinks energy problems are primarily economic and that he should play a major role in both areas.

> FEA Administrator John Sawhill. Once Simon's protege, Sawhill is energy chief in name but has been unable to establish his pre-eminence in fact. One reason: alone among the three, he lacks Cabinet rank. He inherited an agency exhausted by Simon's punishing pace and bereft of the public attention it commanded during the oil shortage. Nonetheless, he has tried to act, in the words of one energy official, "like the crisis is still on and he is Bill Simon."

The approach has not worked. Partly because of the uncertainty over how long FEA will live (Congress authorized it for only two years), Sawhill has not been able to hire a second-in-command. Thus, he has been forced to play both Mr. Inside, running FEA, and Mr. Outside, testifying on Capitol Hill, and the agency has suffered from the division of his attention. On one occasion, the FEA created a loophole in pricing regulations that permitted oil companies to make bigger price increases than Sawhill intended to permit--and did not close it until more than two months after staffers became aware of it.

Rashomon. Much more is at stake in the battle than personal power. With international oil prices likely to stay high for a long time, the U.S., as Ford has noted, must accelerate Project Independence to develop alternate sources of energy--but the effort needs an undisputed leader. A more pressing question--how long to maintain price controls on domestically produced oil--is also hanging fire. Morton and Simon last week advocated a quick start on phasing out the controls. Sawhill, who administers the controls, insists that rapid decontrol would be inflationary.

President Ford has, if anything, confused the situation further by indicating no clear preference among the three rivals. Late last month he summoned them to a meeting in the Oval Office that seemed likely to turn into a bureaucratic version of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral. Instead, it ended like Rashomon: each of the three came out convinced that he was the leader or at least that he had not lost ground. Morton, who managed an hour alone with Ford before the meeting, told subordinates that Interior was where the energy action would center. Sawhill jubilantly noted that Ford repeatedly turned to him with orders to speed Project Independence. Simon did seem uncharacteristically withdrawn and at one point Ford told him: "Bill, you've got your hands full with inflation." Nonetheless, Simon is still head of the Cabinet-level energy committee.

Old Allies. Meanwhile, the brew bubbles. Morton's Interior Department has griped that Sawhill's FEA is duplicating Interior's contingency planning to deal with a possible coal strike this fall. Sawhill has complained to Presidential Aide Kenneth Rush that Simon was virtually building a parallel operation to FEA, mostly by hiring ex-FEA staffers. When Rush suggested to Simon that this was not quite proper, Simon blew up and said that only White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig could call him off, which Haig did not do. In another incident, Simon's and Sawhill's staffs got into a spirited argument over which of the men should sign a letter about natural-gas policy to be sent to the Senate Commerce Committee. They compromised by agreeing that both should sign--and then got into another brouhaha over whether Simon should sign as Secretary of the Treasury or chairman of the energy committee, which would have lent weight to that body. Sawhill wanted Simon to sign as Treasury Secretary, and he got his way.

Some odd alliances have been struck. Simon and Budget Boss Roy Ash have been vying for the loudest voice in overall economic policy, but they have occasionally joined forces to attack Sawhill. Says one Administration official: "When Sawhill criticized Mobil's takeover of Marcor, they [Simon and Ash] crawled all over him." Sawhill had rather mildly observed that he had justified high oil-company profits to the public as necessary to encourage more petroleum exploration and production, and that Mobil had complicated his job by using some of its profits to bid for control of Marcor, a giant retailer.

Morton and Sawhill, despite their differences over decontrol of oil prices, have formed an entente of sorts, apparently in order to neutralize Simon. Both Morton and Sawhill would like to see the creation of a Department of Energy and Natural Resources, which would replace both Interior and the FEA and also take over certain functions of the Commerce Department and the Atomic Energy Commission. The proposal is said to have some chance of congressional approval next year. At this point Morton appears most likely to become the nation's No. 1 energy figure, whether or not such a department is approved, but as head of it he would be more firmly entrenched; Sawhill would get the FEA apparatus made permanent as part of the new structure. But Washingtonologists warn that nothing is predictable in the shadowy corridors of energy power.

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