GAS AND OIL 



What causes the local patriots special distress is that 

 this highly potential Texas raw material is being used 

 for fuel within spitting distance, as they say, of the 

 great anthracite coal fields. To them, that just does not 

 make sense. Their hot resentment has been fanned by 

 hearings held last winter by the Texas Railroad Com- 

 mission, which is charged with oil and gas conservation. 



The testimony that roused the Texans involved a 

 number of well-known names and some important fed- 

 eral agencies. The Tennessee Gas & Transmission Com- 

 pany was originally formed by a syndicate in which 

 Curtiss Dall, former son-in-law of President Roosevelt, 

 was an active member. Its original purpose was for a 

 pipeline from the Opelousas field. When this was vigor- 

 ously protested by the state of Louisiana, the Federal 

 Power Commission permitted the company to switch 

 its application to Driscoll in the South Texas fields. 

 Notice of that revised application was "lost" in the 

 office of Texas Railroad Commissioner Ernest O. 

 Thompson. Accordingly, Texas was not represented at 

 the Washington hearing on this revised application, and 

 the Federal Power Commission rushed through an au- 

 thorizing license in a record twenty-one days. Up to 

 the granting of the license apparently nobody in Texas 

 knew anything about this proposed Texas-West Vir- 

 ginia line. A loan of $44,000,000 was secured from the 

 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which is said to 

 have been the only real money invested in building 



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