OIL: Quota System Defense

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For months, many U.S. oil producers -especially independent Texas producers -have called the Administration's quota on oil imports a failure because it still lets too much foreign oil come into the U.S. To set the record straight, Matthew V. Carson, administrator of the quota plan, told an audience of independent oilmen last week that the program is working just about as well as hoped and "striking a reasonable balance between imports and domestic production." Imports have been cut by 168,900 bbl. per day, a drop of 17.4% from original schedules, are running at 12.5% of domestic production v. an anticipated 16% before the cuts began.

"Our security," Carson said, "is based on many considerations -our military posture, our overall economic and political strength, and our relationships with our friends and neighbors with whom we share a common danger. As administrator of the program it is my job to limit crude-oil imports in the interests of national security. My efforts are not, should not, and cannot be devoted to protection of the markets and profits of any individual. Nor can this be the function of the Federal Government in this highly complex field of crude-oil imports."

The industry's troubles, Carson added, come more from declining demand than from imports. "If all imports were stopped tomorrow, I do not see how that action would increase consumer demand. In a few years, we will be able to use every barrel of oil that we can produce, and probably every barrel we can import."