Oil Week

Last week Manhattan's huge Equitable Building at No. 120 Broadway announced that it would abandon its oil heating system, switch back to anthracite coal. Prime reason for the change was the fact that fuel oil stocks have been reduced 20% since September to a ten-year low, with a consequent rise in "Bunker C" prices from $1.05 to $1.80 per bbl. To the oil industry Equitable's decision meant not only the loss of 70,000 bbl. worth of business annually, but a dangerous precedent.

Talk of diminishing fuel oil stocks, however, did not prevent Oil Administrator Ickes last week from devising a new plan to stop ''hot oil" production in Texas. The Department of Justice had failed to approve the industry's plan for a $10,000,000 oil purchasing pool among 29 companies and Congress had gone home without giving him a law to control and punish companies which produced oil in excess of their quotas. Now he cajoled 38 East Texas refiners representing 87% of the companies of that area into a gasoline stabilization agreement. The refiners promised to abide by his gasoline allocations, to report all transactions, and, above all, to buy no "hot oil." The major producers who also control retail outlets agreed to buy up surplus gasoline from independent refiners who signed the agreement and guarantee them an adequate supply of crude oil at all times. If the 38 Meanwhile last week "hot oil" was burning the political hides of some worthy citizens of Texas. Governor Miriam ("Ma") Ferguson announced that she would call a special session of the State legislature if "hot oil" production was not stopped. What helped provoke her threat was a minor scandal in the Texas Railroad Commission. Six weeks ago the Commission selected as its proration officer to stop "hot oil" shipments, a 56-year-old engineer named Richard Denny Parker. Last week Mr. Parker resigned just before two of the commissioners signed an order for his dismissal on the grounds that under his administration "hot oil" shipments had jumped to 90,000 bbl. per day. Officer Parker, long connected with the Commission as an engineer and supervisor, did not take his discharge lying down. Cried he: "Apparently I made the fatal mistake of firing political favorites of all three commissioners. . . . Every time I fired one, some one of the three commissioners would put him back at work, with resultant weakening of the morale of the entire organization."

"Hot oil" runners got a bad scare when the commission appointed as Mr. Parker's successor able, hard-boiled Capt. E. N. Stanley who recently drafted pipe line regulations for the Commission which oil men believe will be a major step toward stopping the "hot oil" flow.

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