Letters, Feb. 11, 1974

Energy and Guilt

Sir / I hope your assessment of the American attitude toward the energy crisis [Jan. 21] is incorrect. Americans must realize that even if the present "crisis" has been engineered by the oil companies, the country must still admit to having squandered energy for much too long a time. If the crisis is shown to have been fabricated by the oil companies, let that serve to flood the companies with public indignation. But their possible guilt must never become an excuse to let us return to our thoughtless, wasteful expenditures of energy.

PETER FAUR

Manhattan, Kans.

Sir / Generalizations are generally suspect, but I believe that the Federal Energy Office illustrates the general bureaucratic response to crisis. When it could have helped, it was not in existence; now created, it creates its own crisis to justify its existence.

J. SAMUEL GILLESPIE JR.

Richmond

Sir / William Simon should raise the thermostat setting in his home to 68°, keep his library doors open and not "keep the fire going." Then let him find out how the rest of us have to live!

SAMUEL BEACH

Brooklyn

Sir / I pay double for home heating oil; I wait 40 minutes to get a third of a tank of gas at the one out of 20 stations open in my community; I keep my house cold and my speed down. But when my relatives tell me there is gas aplenty, even on weekends, and 70-m.p.h. speeders in California, Texas and Florida, my "popular mood" is hardly "sour skepticism." In short, I am madder than hell, and firmly convinced that we in the Northeast are truly being ripped off!

CAROL SELSBERG

Stamford, Conn.

Sir / Energy crisis—bull! I have not talked to one person who believes it is not contrived. We have had every shortage in the past year that one can imagine. Would you believe a girl at a florist shop told me the reason I could not find a large clay pot was because of a "clay-pot crisis"?

JOANNE BLOSE

Allison Park, Pa.

Sir / TIME rightly concludes that despite what the skeptics have been saying, the energy shortage is indeed real. In one respect, however, I believe that TIME'S reporting is inaccurate and misleading. The first page of the article "The Whirlwind Confronts the Skeptics" presents a picture of six ships that are reported as being queued to deliver fuel. Presumably this was included to support the allegation that tankers are offshore, loaded with supplies, waiting for prices to go up before unloading.

Speaking for Exxon, I can say that we most certainly and emphatically have not done this. At any given time, the number of our tankers waiting to unload has not exceeded the number we would have expected from historical experience. While I cannot speak for other oil companies, the port captain of New York Harbor is on record as having said that the alleged tankers waiting offshore, about which we have heard so much, were in fact not tankers at all; they were container ships, and the pile-up was due to bad weather.

Of the six ships shown, only four might be said with any confidence to be oil tankers. Of these four, two are riding high in the water, obviously having discharged their cargoes.

J.K. JAMIESON

Chairman of the Board

Exxon Corp.

New York City

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