Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies
Book 2 Internet Appendices
Chapter 11: Pretty Boy and Mr. Pipeliner [Robert Herring and Ray Fish]
11.1 Herring at Ground Zero
A little known story from Robert Herring’s life concerns his World War II intelligence work and association with an atomic bomb drop on Japan in August 1945.
After completing his training at Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1942, Herring was sent by train to the west coast to embark for the South Pacific as part of the 5th Army Air Corps deployment. Herring stopped by Ranger, Texas, to see his family on the way to California, and attached to his wrist was a briefcase. His kin did not think it appropriate to ask him about it.
When asked after the war, Robert revealed that the contents had been the early plans for the atomic bomb, which he was instructed to deliver to General George C. Kenney. The Army’s Manhattan Project began in March 1942, and final approval to build the bomb came later that year.
This young man entrusted with this high task seems like another example of the major responsibilities Herring could carry from a very young age. Herring’s family also reported that Herring was on a tracking plane from which he watched an atomic bomb hit one of the two targets, Hiroshima. His assignment as intelligence officer was to estimate the number of fatalities.
Diane Herring, who reviewed a scrapbook of clippings on her father’s war experience, summarized her research as follows:
Many state and national newspapers cite Robert Herring, with photo, often on the front page, regarding the Hiroshima bomb drop. Some postwar articles in local Texas papers possibly embellish Herring’s exploits as he positioned himself to run for Congress. Still, the material as a whole is impressive and intriguing and deserves formal study.
Regarding the bomb drop, Diane Herring found:
One newspaper article stated: “Lt. Col. Herring was 35 miles away when the 1st atomic bomb was dropped and it could be felt at that distance.” It infers that he was on the ground, but other accounts are consistent with him being in the air. A front page piece in the Washington Post on August 8, 1945, had Herring’s photo and cited his estimate that 150,000 were killed at Hiroshima.
After the war, Herring was reportedly called to testify before Congress about his observations. The decorated lieutenant colonel was age 24.
When he was CEO of Houston Natural Gas, Herring recounted some of his wartime experience as follows:
We had reviewed the photographs of Hiroshima immediately after the bombing with the Air Force commanding general in Okinawa, and afterwards I went back to the intelligence office. Some time later the phone rang and the general said, “Take this wire.” After the long message which covered rockets, missiles, pace suits, etc., I asked the general to whom the message was to go, and the answer was, ‘Oh, send it to Buck Rogers or Emperor Ming. They are the only ones who seem to know as much about this field as I do” (R. Herring, 1968: 11).
In all, Herring entered service on January 26, 1942, at age 20. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on December 16, 1942; to Captain on May 22, 1943; to Major on March 10, 1944; and to Lieutenant Colonel on March 8, 1945, shortly after his 24th birthday. His medals included the Silver Star, Air Medal, Legion of Merit, and the Presidential Group Citation (D. Herring).
11.2 Gas Pipelines and Eminent Domain
[Note: There is no callout from Chapter 11 for this appendix]
The use of government powers to force landowners to cede their property for another use is an enduring aspect of political capitalism in the U.S. gas transmission industry. Wartime eminent domain powers were used to expeditiously construct gas pipelines, including the Big Inch and Little Inch federal pipelines in 1942—43, as well as the 1,265-mile Tennessee Gas Transmission system in 1943—44 (Dabney: 35). The origin of such federal eminent domain powers has been told by J. Howard Marshall II:
Some of the railroads refused to grant pipeline easements to cross their roadbeds. I descended upon the head of the American Association of Railroads, James Pelly, for help, but he refused me. Somewhat brutally he said he would rather run the risk of losing the war than risk losing rail traffic to pipelines after the war. When I failed to persuade him, I wrote the Cole Pipeline Act, named after its congressional sponsor, William Cole, which gave the federal government the right to condemn rights-of-way for the new federal pipelines. Congress passed the Act on July 1, 1941. Once having the power of condemnation, we didn’t have to use it. We always negotiated our way through, and quickly (Marshall: 132).
After the Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines were privatized and converted to transport natural gas, security rights-of-way became an issue when owner Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation wanted to expand to Philadelphia and other points in the coal state of Pennsylvania. A “fierce rearguard action against the pipeline” by the coal and railroad industries and their state-government allies left Texas Eastern without easements, and would-be lenders refused to finance the project without an eminent domain law to ensure construction (Castaneda and Pratt: 68).
Texas Eastern, with its excellent ties in Washington, successfully lobbied for federal eminent domain rights, which became law in 1947 as section 7(h) in the Natural Gas Act (Castaneda: 103—104; Bradley: 880—81). As told by gas-pipeline historian Christopher Castaneda, “Pennsylvania’s strongly pro-coal government impeded Texas Eastern’s plans until company officials personally wrote and promoted a federal eminent domain bill for natural gas pipelines” (Castaneda: 5, 103).
Landowners could be a problem in the face of coerced access. The construction of Northern Natural Pipeline Company in the 1930s, a predecessor company to Enron, caused one farmer in Lincoln, Nebraska, to dynamite a pipe crossing on his land. “Other farmers,” summarized a history of Northern Natural Gas Company, “blasted field equipment with their shotguns or simply ordered construction gangs off their properties” (Northern: 5; Szmrecsanyi: 32, 114). Unlike with Northern Natural, however, many early interstate gas lines did not employ eminent domain (Natural Gas: 176—77).
One of the big jobs of Fish Engineering was coaxing landowners to allow construction crews to trench their land in order to lay large-diameter high-pressure pipeline. The head of the Fish Engineering’s Pacific Northwest Pipe Line right-of-way acquisition team, J. Don Creveling, told how difficult it was to buy 5,111 separately owned land tracts when “there’s many a landowner who would just as soon share his bathroom with a stranger as share his land with a pipe line” (quoted in Taylor: 16). Opportunism and obstructionism also created challenges. “Never saw so many sub-divisions spring up in my life” (ibid.: 18), Creveling said of landowners who were trying to increase the value of their land to be purchased.
There was still another challenge. Opponents to and competitors of natural gas put together a war chest to scare landowners about the risk of gas pipelines and also buy tracts on the proposed route (ibid.: 17). The overall result was that Pacific Northwest ended up having to use eminent domain law, even though that made the project “as popular as an internal revenue collector in March” with landowners (ibid.: 17).
Eminent domain was a political solution to what was partially a political problem. Still, its use tainted what otherwise was, as Ray Fish proudly stated, a “free enterprise” project (Fish, 1956: 2). Nor was pipelining quite what Richard “Dick” Ricketts, president of Fish Northwest Constructors, described as “coordinat[ing] the resources of widely separated regions for the benefit of all… through the medium of free enterprise without taking away or otherwise depreciating the rights and privileges of individuals” (Ricketts, 1956: 4).
Bibliography: Chapter 11 Internet Appendices
Bradley, Robert L., Jr. Oil, Gas & Government: The U.S. Experience. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996.
Castaneda, Christopher. Regulated Enterprise: Natural Gas Pipelines and Northwestern Markets, 1938—1954. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993.
Castaneda, Christopher, and Joseph Pratt. From Texas to the East: A Strategic History of Texas Eastern Corporation. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993.
Dabney, Alan. Transcript of a taped Interview with Ray Fish, conducted on April 30, 1962 (copy in author’s files).
Fish, Ray. “Free Enterprise Brings New Energy to the Booming Pacific Northwest.” The Petroleum Engineer, October 1956, 2—3.
Fusaro, Peter, and Ross Miller. What Went Wrong at Enron. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2002.
Herring, Diane. Communication to author. July 12, 2010 (copy in files).
Herring, Robert. “Presentation to Natural Gas Processors Association” (March 20, 1968). Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. Robert Ray Herring Speeches, 1957—1980, MS 395. Series 1. Folder 43.
Marshall, J. Howard. Done in Oil. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.
Natural Gas Hearing before a Subcommittee on the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, 74th Cong., 2nd Sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1936,
Northern: The First Fifty Years. Omaha, NE: InterNorth, 1980.
Ricketts, Richard. “Building the Best Line Possible Isn’t Enough Today!” The Petroleum Engineer, October 1956, 4—5.
Szmrecsanyi, Stephen. InterNorth: The First Fifty Years. Omaha, NE: unpublished, 1981.
Taylor, Donald. “The 2440-mile Skirmish Line,” The Petroleum Engineer, October 1956, 16—18.