A Shortage, an If

Tanker shipments of oil to the U.S. Eastern Seaboard were 40% below demand last week. In New York City, the normal two months' stock of heating oil was down to a few days' supply. Between torpedoes and tanker diversion, the Eastern oil shortage (TIME, March 2) was getting acute.

In Texas, whose problem was always overproduction, storage stocks climbed at the rate of nearly 300,000 barrels a day. In announcing the March allowable, Railroad Commissioner Jerry Sadler admitted it was more than could be shipped. Big Humble Oil (S.O.N.J. subsidiary) cut its West Texas takings by 40%. At mid-continent refineries, gasoline prices declined 1/4-c-: a gallon because the oil could not get to where it was needed.

East & West, oilmen racked their brains for ah answer to the transport problem. Commissioner Sadler proposed that pipelines within Texas be ripped up, relaid cross country to Eastern refineries (thus saving the steel which the Government refused to allocate for such a line last fall). Rail tank cars ran day & night, in the week ending Feb. 21 carried a record 326,636 barrels; but their best was about 20% of Eastern demand. Moreover, around 3,000 cars had to be kept on the Pacific Coast, where tanker-dependent Oregon and Washington also face a shortage.

In this crisis, many an oilman pinned his faith on a dull, devious, plodding form of transport that could never compete with pipelines or tankers for the coastal trade in times of peace. Barge tows of the inland waterways creep up the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Monongahela, the Allegheny to upriver terminals, there transfer their oil to tank cars for the short haul east. Already Gulf loadings of river barges have doubled or tripled over last year. Loaded at Houston or Corpus Christi, the barges now thread their way through the shallows and marshes of the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi. After April 1, when an intracoastal canal through these waters will be opened all the way to Corpus Christi, barge loadings are expected to soar still more.

An Army engineer in Galveston last week said that "practically unlimited" amounts of oil and oil products can be shipped on the inland waterways-- if enough barges and tugs can be obtained.

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