Carter: Gas as a Gag

Good news about shortages can also be bad news

The nation's gasoline situation is beginning to resemble a good-news-bad-news joke. The good news: the shortages that appeared menacing in early May have eased, just in time to promise that the majority of motorists setting out on Memorial Day drives could find enough fuel to get home again. That is also the bad news: the improvement is likely to lessen pressure on the Administration and Congress to work out a coherent energy strategy. On the Administration side, the Department of Energy continues to go through a startling series of switches on gas policy. Congress, in a mood somewhere between anarchy and revolt, appears unable to do anything beyond rejecting whatever the Administration proposes.

No thanks to either, gasoline lines in panic-stricken California dwindled dramatically last week. Waiting times averaged only 20 minutes, and at a few stations there were no lines at all. As the weekend began, supplies were still tight and inconveniences abounded in much of the nation. Motorists stopping at gas stations along New Jersey's Garden State Parkway were restricted to $3 maximum purchases, which put little more than three gallons in their tanks and would move gas guzzlers a mere 30 miles. But in resort areas from Cape Cod to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, enough gas appeared available to handle holiday crowds.

The easing was traced to several causes. Some states did not need all the gas allotted to them in May to make sure that police cars, fire trucks and ambulances kept running; they are now releasing some for sale to individual drivers. Many gas stations that angered drivers by shortening hours or closing on Sundays earlier in the month saved enough fuel to have some left to dispense on the Memorial Day weekend. There were indications that motorists were curtailing driving a bit too, and in California preholiday freeway traffic, after a sharp drop, was still about 5% below normal. Across the nation, airline, train and bus travel boomed.

Looking ahead, Deputy Secretary of Energy John O'Leary told Congress last week that gasoline supplies this summer are likely to fall only 3% to 4% below 1978, and might equal last year's level. That would still leave a shortage, since some 3% more cars, trucks and buses are roaming the open road now than a year ago. But the most pressing problem may be shifting from gas to diesel fuel. Oil companies are dribbling out to distributors only 55% to 85% as much diesel fuel as a year ago. Aviation fuel supply is also tight.

O'Leary unfortunately compounded the confusion. In April, President Carter asserted that stocks of crude oil were dangerously low and had to be rebuilt. Result: oil companies obediently stored crude that they normally would have refined into gasoline. Last week O'Leary said the oil companies had been too "conservative" and urged them to reduce stocks of both crude oil and gasoline in order to make more gas available now.

The DOE'S zigzags have brought Energy Secretary James Schlesinger under such heavy fire that White House advisers urged Carter either to fire him or to defend him publicly. Carter chose the second course; Press Secretary Jody Powell said last week that Schlesinger had been "as effective as anyone can be," given the situation." Schlesinger actually offered his resignation to Carter in April, but now he regards himself as the messenger despised because he brings bad news. He is determined to stay on. But Schlesinger is so unpopular in Congress, one DOE official confesses, that "just saying we favor something can create votes against it."

Not that Congress needs any such incentive. Having rejected Carter's conservation and stand-by gas rationing proposals, the legislators are now rebelling against his plan to phase out price controls on domestically produced crude oil beginning in June. Carter decided on decontrol in the hope that higher prices would both discourage consumption and stimulate production--and also in the belief that Congress wanted to end controls.

But the House Democratic Caucus last week voted 138 to 69 to continue controls. The vote will have no effect unless it is repeated by the full House and Senate, and in the upper chamber oil-state Senators probably could sustain a filibuster against continued controls. But the revolt does underline Carter's inability to get a consensus, even within his own party, on any kind of energy policy.

The rebellion against decontrol was led by Anthony ("Toby") Moffett, 34, who once headed Ralph Nader's organization in Connecticut and has become a leader of the "Watergate babies"--the highly independent Congressmen elected in 1974.

Believing that Congress should not simply oppose, Moffett is also pushing his own plan to force every driver to choose one day a week on which he would keep his car or cars in the garage. The motorist would get a windshield sticker identifying the day he chose not to drive; if caught on the road on the forbidden day, he would be subject to arrest and a fine.

If that is to be Congress's answer to the gas shortage, it leaves a lot to be desired. Carter has told congressional leaders that he doubts the plan is practical.

Moffett himself concedes it would be hard to enforce and, in fact, is difficult to draft in proper language. But he adds: "It's a choice between this and three-mile lines at the gas stations and shootouts at the pumps, California style."

Not yet; the shortage is not that bad.

But it could turn drastic in the future if OPEC continues to restrict production and jack up prices, as it is doing now. Meanwhile, American energy policy is not being made by the Government at all, but by gas-station owners, oil companies and a very bewildered public.

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