Where to Get It

Where to Get It Railroad men raised their sights again last week, began talking about bringing 900,000 barrels of oil a day into the rationed East (last week's new record: 708,000). At this figure, provided barges and other sources continue to bring in close to 200,000 barrels more, the present rationing rate will let the East begin putting around 100,000 barrels a day back into its depleted inventories (though the section will still be far short of the 1,600,000 barrels a day it used to consume in carefree pre-war days).

> To go beyond 900,000 barrels a day, the railroads may need help in one or more of numerous forms:

>They might need to transfer to the East Coast run many of the tank cars now tied up for local service in the Middle West--even if that requires some politically inexpedient form of mild rationing in the Mississippi Valley.

> They might need help from WPB on the allocation of enough materials to keep their tank cars from breaking down under the grueling oil service.

> They might need to have restrictions lifted on new drillings in the Illinois fields, where there is already a big surplus of gas and where drilling new wells has been virtually stopped. Tank cars on the run from Illinois could make twice as many round trips as they do now from the Texas fields 1,800 miles away.

>They might need help promoting more widespread pooling of oil, to cut down the switching time still being lost in making sure that each company's oil gets to that company's own refineries.

Of the 1,600,000 barrels the East used to consume, 377,000 went for domestic heating, 422,000 for industrial furnaces, 640,000 for gasoline. Right now gasoline is rationed to 50%, heating oil is not needed, industrial use is not affected. Biggest reason for building up supplies along the coast is to have a reserve ready when fall comes and household furnaces are started up again.

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