. . . Where They're Still Needed

...Their first duty was to their stockholders, they said...

...In a series of columns based on leaked documents, Jack Anderson told this story: February 19, 1970: The FPC’s chief economist, Haskell Wald, reported that gas producers in Southern Louisiana who were seeking a $4billion rate increase-through a raise in the ceiling price to 26 cents-had underestimated reserves by 1.3 trillion cubic feet...

...Of course, the company was only allowed to earn a 15 per cent return, so the majority simply juggled the figures to make them come out right...

...small producers would be de-regulated...

...But the FTC’s Halverson had an explanation for the survey’s overall conclusion of less gas than reported by the AGA: the survey appeared to have been “weighted” where under-reporting by the AGA was “least likely to occur” and “limited” where “most likely to occur,’’ Halverson told a Senate Commerce hearing...

...John Wilson, then chief of the FPC’s Division of Economic Studies, after examining the recaptured data, told a hearing held by Senator Edward Kennedy that at least 13 major companies had submitted data that were misleading if not false...

...The next nine are also oil companies: Shell, Standard Oil of Indiana, Gulf, Phillips, Mobil, ,Texaco, Union, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), and Continental...

...The staff pointed out that Chase Manhattan Bank, through various nominees, is at once the largest shareholder in ARCO and the second largest in Mobil...

...Consequently, the industry could claim much higher costs-per-unit in the discovery of the gas...

...Decisions in the Dark These erroneous estimates are vitally important because the government must often rely on them to make decisions on prices...

...During the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon promised to end the “heavy-handed bureaucratic regulatory schemes” of the Johnson Administration...

...Previously, industry records had indicated no serious problems, according to Charles F. Wheatley, Jr., of the American Public Gas Association, an organization of publicly owned gas utilities.,In 1969, John Nassikas signaled that prices should be higher, meaning they would be...

...The Federal Power Commission (FPC), whose five members all were appointed by President Nixon, is also urging Congress to de-regulate...

...The Washington Post, too, has cited editorially the need for more natural gas as the reason for supporting de-regulation...

...He was a congressman from Illinois for 22 years and became the senior Republican on the House Commerce Committee...

...That was what ARC0 was trying to do last year when it filed an “emergency” application with the FPC to sell gas across state lines at 50 cents, or more than twice the prevailing area ceiling price of 24 cents...

...On February 1, for example, he led the majority to approve a sale of new natural gas from an Alabama field at the highest price in FPC history...

...He asked Congress for funds for a comprehensive, truly independent survey...

...Even the national market is less wide open and competitive than it seems...

...But natural gas may necessarily be an exception to this rule, for two reasons...

...To head the FPC, he picked John Nassikas, son of a Greek immigrant who had become a wealthy businessman in Manchester, New Hampshire...

...A penny increase in the price of 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas at the wellhead costs consumers $230 million annually, and many of the raises that are being discussed are in the 15- to 3 h e n t range...

...Bid sales for leases on the federal tracts are already going full blast, as are exploratory drilling and development, hindered only by shortages of equipment and personnel which cannot be quickly overcome...

...For 10 years he was an aide to Senator Thruston B. Morton, who on leaving the Senate became a director of a pipeline regu.lated by the agency, Texas Gas Transmission...

...Still higher prices cannot speed the process up or bring in much new gas...

...Pifer said that despite the finding, in at least 50 sample fields, of even less gas than the AGA had reported, his committee had found up to eight times more gas than the AGA...

...begun...

...rather than prescribing a just and reasonable rate by regulatory review...

...Finally, even though the “energy crisis” atmosphere is the psychological fuel for de-control, and although one of the major arguments in favor of de-regulation is that it would encourage production of more natural gas, he had neither said nor been asked how he would assure that windfall profits would be plowed back into development of new supplies...

...Also at the Kennedy hearing, yet another FPC economist, George L. Donkin, testified that after spending $767 million to lease more than 743,000 acres in Southern Louisiana, companies, including Standard Oil of California, Exxon, Shell, Texaco, and Tenneco, were not producing on them...

...In April, 1973, in his first energy message, President Nixon proposed de-regulation and of course sharply increased the expectation of higher prices...

...The price controls on the big companies would be extended to intrastate markets, either through state regulatory bodies that meet federal standards or through the commission...

...As I understand President Nixon, it has to do with the rising price of another commodity, petroleum...

...He insists there is no conflict of interest in this so-called “Mallard case...

...Moody and Brooke voted for it, Nassikas against (Springer and Smith were not yet members...

...Therefore it commands higher prices, causing diversion of supplies that would otherwise be sold interstate...

...Here’s the clincher: most new gas can be sold only in interstate commerce because it comes from federally owned lands...

...The estimates as of June 30, 1972, were, in a bizarre episode, ordered incinerated, but, thanks to a timely inquiry by Senator Hart and to a malfunctioning incinerator, were retrieved...

...Congress said No...

...in fact, the very lack of competition that brought the govemment into the business of regulating natural gas in the first place, with the Natural Gas Act of 1938, which directed the FPC to regulate the price of natural gas sold in interstate commerce...

...These range from short-term deregulation of brief (60- or 180-day) “emergency” sales (some of which were made at 75 cents) to subtle and complicated financial arrangements for shifting the burden of interest payments for pipeline projects...

...What’s to be done...

...The additional cost to consumers, estimated by David Schwartz, the FPC economist, would be $18 billion annually...

...There, he demonstrated an orientation toward industry-most any industry...

...How letting the price of natural gas play leap-frog with the price of oil will solve “the problem of prices and profits,” especially profits, the President has not explained or, at this writing, been asked to explain...

...Why the rise now...

...It would help satisfy the need for energy...

...A member of the study’s technical advisory committee, Professor Howard W. Pifer I11 of Harvard, wasn’t...

...The difficulty with using higher intrastate prices as a guideline is that many big producers (including Pennzoil and Standard Oil of Indiana) can simultaneously sell at high prices within one state and buy at the regulated interstate rates...

...Lifting price controls at the wellhead, he contends, is essential not only to the achievement of national “self-sufficiency” in energy by 1980, but also to managing “the problem of prices and profits,” as he phrased it at his news conference on February 26...

...Nassikas admitted that the survey data which the producers provided for their reserves as of December 3 1 , 197 1, had been lost for months...

...Don S. Smith, the newest commis...

...Surprised...

...No other country gives up its petroleum-bearing lands entirely to the oil industry...

...But until 1954, when the Supreme Court ordered it to do otherwise, the agency sought-or pretendedto carry out its mandate by regulating only the prices charged by pipelines for carrying gas from the wellhead to the market...

...President Nixon’s first choice for the seat held by Smith was Robert H. Morris, who had repre- sented Standard Oil of California for 15 years, seven of them on natural gas matters...

...But the battle had been exhausting, and there wasn’t much hope of defeating the next nominee President Nixon would send up...

...He] sometimes sounds more like a natural gas executive expounding about how the FPC should regulate his industry than a man burdened with the actual responsibility of regulation...

...Last summer, Rep...

...will be insufficient,” Continental Oil told the FPC last summer), the cost to consumers would be $13.5 billion...

...First, the majority had acted the day after Southern Natural Gas, the pipeline seeking to buy gas from the Mallard-Exxon venture, had sent each commissioner a telegram-later termed a “threat” by Sen...

...Ironically, even if prices do rise, there is no guarantee that they’ll lead to greater efforts at exploration and development...

...One of their arguments is that other industries are more concentrated...

...Pastore-asking for action “either today or tomorrow...

...Moreover, the bureau said, the eight companies are to some extent “commonly rather than independently owned...

...Second, there had been some funny business with the figures...

...In May, the FPC announced the results of a new, purportedly independent National Gas Reserve Survey...

...John E. Moss of California and 21 other congrhsmen have challenged the technique in the U. S. Court of Appeals...

...Moody’s old firm had also represented Texaco, one of the beneficiaries of the previous record price, which had been approved on May 30 by a majority again led by Moody...

...Torbert H. Macdonald, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee which has oversight responsibility for the FPC, asked a group of oil executives “one simple question: Would you put the windfall profits you will obviously make from higher gas prices into exploration for new gas...

...An Unnatural Occurrence Regrettably, the Mallard decision and other devices for de-regulation in the guise of regulation are by no means the end of the matter...

...If the price approximately tripled to 80 cents (“Anything less...

...They can raise the price of gas by raising the price of oil (or having it raised by the sheiks), and they can raise the price of oil by raising the price of gas...

...Where Price Controls Are Still Needed by Morton Mintz For a year now, in messages to Congress and in press conferences, President Nixon has been urging deregulation of natural gas...

...The method, called optional pricing, is simple, if probably illegal*: Let a producer and a pipeline negotiate whatever price they please for “new” gas (that is, gas from a well just beginning production), without regard to the area ceiling price...

...Brooke takes his cues from: Rush Moody, fr...

...In the five years 1968 through 1972, discoveries of new gas declined...

...It was...

...it even denied the FTC staff access to key papers and, when it belatedly yielded, ordered the papers to be copied “by hand...

...But the majority approved a 55-cent price, the company’s requested figure, which was twice as high as most gas in the region was bringing...

...Economists generally consider that when the eight largest firms in an industry have 50 per cent of total sales, normal market forces no longer suffice to guarantee the market against monopolistic power...

...In that year, and under Nassikas’ leadership, the commission adopted a technique making it possible to abolish cost-based regulation without legislation...

...in the state-owned offshore domain in Louisiana, and in offshore federal and state lands in the Texas Gulf Coast, the eight control 100 per cent...

...Today, it is used in approximately 40 million homes, and at least three million business establishments...

...What he really seems to be saying is that the price of naturalgas, most of which is produced from public lands, should be governed not Morton Mintz is a reporter for The Washington Post...

...A seeming True Believer in a 1 9th-century vision of “free private enterprise” that is totally detached from the 20thcentury reality of giant interlocking international oil companies, he said within a few days of taking office that the price of gas should be raised so as to mitigate or prevent shortages...

...But what counts here is not the national market, but (as the Supreme Court has ruled in many antitrust cases) the relevant market...

...Understandably, he pfovided an incentive among producers to hold back supplies, because profits might well be higher over an extended period than if the supplies were marketed...

...To raise the price of natural gas, Nassikas got help from the other Nixon appointees, currently: Albert B. Brooke, Jr...

...During the Johnson Administration, then-chairman Lee White tried to end the FPC’s dependence on the industry for data...

...These federally owned fields are valued primarily for their oil, but gas is usually present, too...

...In addition to optional pricing, the FPC has concocted numerous other devices to erode cost-based regulation...

...President Johnson, who did a lot of favors for Dirksen, did himbut not the country-another by naming Brooke to fill a vacancy...

...Consequently they are in a position to whipsaw prices upward in the national market...

...First, decades of low prices have now created a virtually captive market for natural gas...

...When, after a long delay, the hearings on the nomination began, the industry’s friends in the Senate asked whether Morris was committed to de-regulation...

...This led to a blockbuster disclosure to Hart’s antitrust subcommittee in June, even if it was admittedly tentative and disputed by the three companies...

...So low, in fact, that gas producers, distributors, and their trade organization, the American Gas Association (AGA), were able to induce consumers by the millions to switch from coal and oil to cheap, clean-burning gas...

...A rising price is supposedly the best incentive for exploration, so why did discoveries and commitments decline...

...And so there was a sense of relief when the President nominated Don Smith, who had acquired a pro-consumer reputation in Arkansas as a member of the State Public Utility Commission...

...The last three years’ experience with generalized price controls shows that there are severe drawbacks to regulation: when the price is held too low, supply may dry up...

...He made the report to FPC General Counsel R. Gordon Gooch...

...An0 ther argument for de-regulation, a favorite of legislators, including Senators Marlow Cook and Russell B. Long, is that the price of gas is not regulated when the gas is produced and sold within one state...

...In March, 1974, there was a sequel: the FPC staff reported that the industry has seriously underreported the new fields discovered in Louisiana in 1971 and 1972...

...Having locked these customers in, the AGA (which 20 years ago opposed de-regulation) now wants to charge as much as the traffic will bear...

...Although the 45-cent price approved last May and the 55-cent price approved this February technically apply only to their particular contracts, they are forerunners of billions of dollars in annual increased costs to consumers everywhere...

...September 15, 1970: Nassikas, in a letter to Senator Hart, not only claimed the industry and FPC reserve estimates to be “closely parallel,” but also said that this assertion was supported by staff reports and investigations...

...But the other partner, Transocean Oil, reported significant reserves...

...In September, 1970, however, Senator Hart requested the Federal Trade Commission to make an independent investigation...

...The FPC introduced its third system of regulation in 1960, when it adopted a system of setting ceiling prices for each geographical area rather than for each company...

...Among producers of natural gas, eight control 68 per cent of current uncommitted reserves-that is, reserves still available for sale...

...Development of one fuel therefore proceeds in conjunction with development of the other...

...Although Moody pledged on being confirmed in 1971 that he would disqualify himself in “any matter that was participated in by your former associates,” he has not only participated in but actually led commission decisions on cases which apparently involve his former partners...

...But, said Schwartz, the U. S. Geologic Survey had estimated the potential gas supply at 2,100 trillion cubic feet-a difference of more than 100 per cent...

...A few weeks after five of the companies had claimed to the FPC that they had neghgible or even zero “available” reserves, they acknowledged to the agency that they had signed contracts to sell large amounts of the supposedly unavailable gas...

...In a dissent which Nassikas joined, he denounced the decision as “a travesty of regulatory justice,” and charged the majority, led by Moody, with having “capitulated to the prescription of an industryestablished price...

...The report said that the actual new reserves, 4.8 trillion cubic feet, were 54 per cent higher than the industry’s report of 3.15 trillion...

...The seller, as it turns out, is a joint venture led by Mallard and Exxon, which the law firm had represented during Moody’s tenure...

...Neither has he said (nor been asked) at what point profits become excessive...

...The disclosure was made by the chief of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, James T. Halverson, who testified that the AGA reporting mechanism “could provide the vehicle for a conspiracy . . . to under-report gas reserves...

...Of the known reserves in Southem Louisiana four firms hold 96.9 per cent...

...FPC price controls, for both fuels, would apply only to the largest companies...

...The refund was, however, $65 million less than the FPC staff members recommended...

...But because the prices were set on a company-by-company basis for each of the thousands of companies, regulation was an administrative disaster...

...This astonishingly tough language was incited mainly by two points that Springer and Nassikas found offensive...

...The corporation would put its profits into the Treasury of the United States...

...It makes little difference that there are thousands of producers elsewhere if there are only two that the Louisiana pipeline owners can deal with...

...Since the oil and gas industries are by and large one and the same (and, what’s more, have been taking increasingly significant control of other key alternative fuels), this argument puts the energy companies in a dominant position...

...Of course, the supporters of deregulation all insist that the industry is competitive...

...said Senator Henry M. Jackson...

...Nonetheless, this system did keep prices low...

...One, Ashland Oil, reported to the FPC that the blocks contained no uncommitted reserves...

...It would build strategic reserves...

...Then, for almost a decade, the public interest actually had some representation on the FPC...

...It turned out he wasn’t, so some of them joined the consumer forces to defeat Morris, 49 to 44-the first rejection of a nominee to a regulatory commission since 1927...

...Most importantly, the bill would establish a federal oil and gas corporation, modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority, to explore for, develop, and produce natural gas and oil where most of it is-on government lands...

...by the costs of production, but by the price of the oil, which, is in turn set by sheiks in the Persian Gulf...

...Nassikas and Springer, disagreeing somewhat, recommended that the price be 41 cents to produce a 15-percent return...

...William L. Springer...

...Brooke’s sponsor for the FPC, however, was the late Senate Minority Leader, Everett M. Dirksen, a man of many ties to the oil and gas industry...

...The producers’ own records disclosed that they regularly reported to the AGA-and through it to the FPC-only one-half to onetenth of their true reserves...

...The optional pricing system can lead to some dramatic increases-for example, in one Southern Louisiana case a rise of 73 per cent in a short time (from a 26-cent ceiling price in 1971 to 45 cents soon afterward...

...He told Kennedy that, with two-thirds of the survey’s members affiliated directly or indirectly with the industry or with government, the study failed “to meet the criterion of an independent valuation...

...Early last year, the FPC responded with a survey of its own, which showed a 26-percent decline in “available” reserves between June, 1970, and July, 1972...

...The FPC was obstructive from the beginning...

...Its principle emphasis is on creating an environment in which the oil and natural gas industry will be restructured in a gradual, orderly way by expanding the market share and influence of independent producers, who do 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the “wildcat” exploration of unproven fields...

...After the court order, the FPC began to regulate the price at which the gas itself was sold when it left the ground to enter the pipeline...

...which fosters cooperation rather than competition...

...Not even Exxon, for example, has as big a share of the petroleum market as General Motors has of the automobile market...

...This is true-on a national basis...

...The point was reinforced in January by FPC economist Schwartz...

...Lee White, head of the Consumer Federation’s Energy Policy Task Force and a former FPC chairman, has said that the bill President Nixon has sent to Congress is so worded that within a short time, possibly a year, contracts would be renegotiated to de-regulate “old” gas, too...

...In 1963 he became a partner in a Midland, Texas, law firm...

...But all indications are that the Administration wants to lift the restrictions from “old” gas, too...

...The FTC staff, said that the companies’ many joint ventures make each of them the “confidant” of the others and create “a solid community of interest...

...Morris was defeated not only by Senate consumer forces but also by the oil and gas gang...

...But his swing vote in the Mallard case brought disillusionment instead of relief...

...for the approximately 40 million consumers who use natural gas for heating, cooking, and other residential needs, the de-regulation issue is enormously important...

...The most promising hope appears to be a comprehensive package of legislation sponsored mainly Senator Adlai Stevenson 111...

...Although there are 3,218 corporations that produce natural gas,* the fact remains that a dozen companies control 90 per cent of production...

...December 1, 1970: Wald told Gooch of errors of up to 40 per cent in the industry estimate, which was 24 trillion cubic feet...

...The commission approved the 50-cent price in October on the basis of evidence that two buyers within the state were willing to pay that much or more...

...now the de-regulation lobby need only blame “low” prices set by, the FPC for shortages of natural’gas...

...But only 20 years ago there were 40,000...

...Simple But Illegal The Mallard case, one of severalin which the FPC has approved industry requests for steadily higher prices, illustrates the trend that has greatly disturbed consumer forces in the energy field- the commission’s de facto retreat from price regulation...

...The leader is Exxon, which is also the world’s largest oil company...

...It got so that for months one could hardly visit a hearing on Capitol Hill without having to listen to some industry spokesman say, with almost palpable satisfaction, . “Even The Washington Post . . .” Most significantly of all, the FPC has been doing its best to de-regulate the industry through the back door, with a series of decisions allowing price increases in “special” cases...

...The Senate would pass it “over my dead body...

...If beef prices rise too high you can switch to chicken or cheese, but if your home is equipped with natural gas you’re not likely to switch to electricity...

...A Harvard Law School graduate, Nassikas spent a couple of years representing the State of New Hampshire opposing utilities and railroads, but, then switched to a career representing these interests...

...At a point when Kennedy and Johnson appointees meant that only two of the five commissioners were agents of the oil and gas industry, for example, the commission ordered the El Paso Natural Gas Company to refund $155 million to consumers in Southern California who had been overcharged...

...See ”acornpanying article by Robert Samuelson...

...sioner, provided the swing vote in the Mallard case...

...It is the array of interlocksthrough joint bidding for government oil and gas tracts offshore, through joint foreign ventures, through joint ownership of pipelines, through financial institutions, through seats on the boards of supposedly competitive companies-that increases the impor*Among 10,000 producers of gas and oil...

...In the federally owned domain off the Louisiana coast, the eight firms control 75 per cent...

...The Better Solution The impact of these disclosures has been to generate so much powerful opposition on Capitol Hill that President Nixon’s de-regulation bill probably does not now stand a chance...

...Indeed, says David S. Schwartz, assistant chief of the FPC’s Office of Economics, “All major pipeline purchasers have producing affiliates...

...Before 1972, the FPC could not have approved a price increase like Mallard’s...

...It showed reserves to be 9.4 per cent less than the AGA had estimated...

...The FTC’s Bureau of Competition, after long delays, obtained subpoenas for the records of 11 major producers in Southern Louisiana, but had to go ’ to court-and was still there at this writing-to enforce them against eight recalcitrant companies...

...This concentration has , prompted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to file an anti-monopoly complaint against eight of the ten (all but Phillips and Continental), claiming that “in virtually every facet of their operation, they have common rather than competitive interests...

...To make matters worse, the buyers-the pipeline companies-are not independent of the producers...

...It would provide a yardstick for actual costs of productionno w the governmen t literally doesn’t know what it costs to produce a barrel of oil on its own lands...

...And if a side effect of this hesitation was to create the impression of an overall shortage, so much the better...

...Even if there were a case for de-regulating this “new” gas, there is no reason for believing that higher prices for “old” gas-gas already discovered and flowing-would induce new discoveries...

...His performance was such that even Forbes, which once based an advertising campaign on the slogan “Forbes: Capitalist Tool,” said, “ICs hard to see how the troubled natural gas industry could have a regulator more to its taste...

...No reasonable company would rush to find and sell gas at today’s price if it knew that a little patience would reward it with greater profits tomorrow...

...Second, the industry is so uncompetitive that removing government controls might simply raise the prices without producing any of the supposed benefits of the free market...

...Oil prices are rising, and since gas is in some cases a substitute for petroleum, the gas producers feel that their prices should rise, too...

...Or is it something the industry had to have, one way or another, because without it there would be no case for deregulation and consequent lush profits...

...tance of the industry’s concentration ratios...

...The public has been impressed with the hazards of scarce fuel supplies...

...The President’s arguments for deregulation, for all practical purposes, are indistinguishable from those of the oil and gas industry, which contributed an estimated $5 million to his 1972 reelection campaign, and of the “oil and gas gang” (the legislators inclined to the industry’s view of things) on Capitol Hill...

...The FPC staff had calculated, using the normal standard for productivity of the gas field, that a ceiling price of 35 cents per 1,000 cubic feet would yield a “just and reasonable” return of 15 per cent...

...Gulf and Union, however, did supply the requested data...

...Suppose there is across-the-board deregulation, and that one makes the entirely plausible assumption that the companies can make the current average price at the wellhead, 24 cents, quadruple...

...The Exceptional Case The basic question about natural gas is which system-the free market or government regulation-will best serve the two ends of providing an adequate supply of natural gas, and doing so at the lowest reasonable price...

...And their answer simply amazed me: It was a unanimous No...

...This new price will then prevail unless the FPC disapproves it...

...Continental supplied most...

...It would be a supplier of last resort...

...The national market is irrelevant for a pipeline originating, say, in a field in offshore Louisiana (one of the most important producing areas...

...Two blocks of offshore Louisiana properties had been leased by two partners, he told a House Select Small Business subcommittee...

...November, 1971 : Nassikas again cited the industry estimate, in a letter to Senator Frank E. Moss...

...Nixon didn’t delay in reappointing him in 1969 to fill a full seven-year term...

...December 9, 1970: Just as if the estimate had not been challenged at all, Nassikas and Gooch cited it at a hearing held by Senator Lee Metcalf...

...During the same period, the FPC, pursuing de facto regulation by erosion, almost doubled area price ceilings and granted price increases of about $2 billion...

...Clearly, it is not in Chase Manhattan’s interest to promote vigorous competition between them,” the statement said...

...But in his first big case on the FPC, he blew the whistle loud and strong against the Mallard decision...

...And that means the de-regulation of natural gas so that it is competitive, as far as price is concerned...

...President Nixon has cited intrastate competition as an argument for de-regulation, but surely it makes sense to turn the argument around-to say it makes sense to bring intrastate prices under control, so they can’t be manipulated to force up national prices...

...Here are the principal components of the legislation: The wellhead price of oil, for the first time, would come under FPC regulation, because oil and gas are generally end-use alternatives to each other...

...Wilson, now a private consultant, testified that the 13 producers had reported “zero available reserve^,'^ although they had invested tens of millions of dollars in leases on tens of thousands of acres of such fields...

...The shortages that higher prices are supposed to overcome were discovered by producers after their requests for a rate increase in 1968 had been turned down by the FPC and then the Supreme Court...

...One of his personal clients in a 1966 state court case was Mallard Exploration, a gas producer whose name will assume great importance as this story goes on...

...On *Rep...

...And it would be pro-competitive...

...May 30, 1973, the commission approved this increase...

...It was because the FPC kept signaling that, despite these increases, prices would be still higher in the future...

...Congress hasn’t passed a procompetitive piece of legislation in 20 years, but that’s no reason not to act on this one...

...Even so, back-door de-regulation by the FPC continues to be a serious threat...

...Prices aside, is the shortage of natural gas reserves natural...

...Here’s one more item: FPC economist Schwartz told the House subcommittee that the industry’s Potential Supply Committee had estimated the nation’s potential gas supply at 1,000 trillion cubic feet (annual consumption approximates 23 trillion...

...As President Nixon keeps indicating, the real offensive in favor of de-regulation has just...

...In addition, commitments of new gas to the interstate market fell almost 50 per cent...