Bleak New England Days

Last week a tone of desperate urgency crept into official pleas for more industrial and residential conversion from oil to coal for heating. James C. Richdale, chairman of the New England Council Liquid Fuel Committee, said: "We've got to quit talking about 75% [of normal fuel oil needs] we've got to tell the truth." The truth was that consumers may not get 50% of their needs.

Massachusetts' Governor Leverett Saltonstall, after a day spent conferring with Petroleum Czar Ickes in Washington, where offices are comfortably warm (see p. 22), returned to icy Boston determined to invoke his emergency war powers, if necessary, to force conversion. His first action last week was to proclaim a voluntary "gasless Sunday."

Big hope had been the Texas-Illinois pipeline. By cutting 500 miles off the tank-car trips to the East, the line would have enabled the railroads to keep New England supplied. But the pipeline will not be ready until February and Ickes already has taken three steps aimed at upping rail deliveries to New England at least 30% to 300,000 bbl. daily. The steps: 1) No rail tank-car deliveries to five 'Southern states, western New York and Pennsylvania (the cars will rush oil to New England); 2) WPB permission to build 300 tank trailer trucks, each of 4,000-gallon capacity; 3) Early assignment to oil service of some of the 26,000 cars now used to haul vegetable oils, chemicals, alcohol and wine.

But these moves are only pinch-hitting measures. They can be knocked into a cocked hat by the first New England blizzard that slows rail traffic. The nub of the trouble is that New England is still using daily 100,000 bbl. of oil more than it is receiving. Because it thought it would get more oil, only 20% of New England industry has converted to coal and still less conversion has been done by home owners. Two buildings that could have been converted are the State House and City Hall in Boston. Annual savings: 1.5 million gal. of fuel oil.

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