Representative CONABLE. Senator, at the outset let me say I hope Standard Oil of New Jersey and Exxon don't get into a dispute over this. I think it unlikely they will because they are the identical company.

Senator NELSON. These big companies change their names so often. I realized when I said it I was talking about the same company. That is probably another technique for confusing us.

Representative CONABLE. It appears quite likely that there is very substantial agreement between you and the other proponents of your bill and the administration about the need for this and I hope we can move promptly and with cooperation to get some sort of enacting legislation requiring mandatory reporting, something that will not bog down into any protracted dispute relating to the matter of degree, but as it does appear that one of the first steps we must take if we are to resolve the confusion the American people feel about fragmentation and frequently contradictory reporting is to build a sound base, and that this first step should have full cooperation and I hope that you will work as closely with the administration as it appears to be likely to advance that goal. And it shouldn't be erased between conflicting political interests at this point because the public does have grave concern about what the facts are.

That is not a question, that is a statement and a hope.
Senator NELSON. I would agree with that.

Representative CONABLE. I would like to ask you one thing, sir. In your statement you refer to an FTC official statement regarding some natural gas reserves and underestimates of those reserves up to 1,000 percent being reported to or by the Federal Power Commis

sion.

Can you tell us the name of the FTC official, when and where he made the statement, what information he based it on? We would be interested in that because we heard very similar testimony regarding underestimates of oil reserves from Ralph Nader last week and this kind of statement is very disturbing to the public.

Senator NELSON. Yes, the statement was made before Senator Hart's subcommittee last sumer by Mr. James Halverson, Director of the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission.

Representative CONABLE. Bureau of Competition?

Senator NELSON. Director of the Bureau of Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Mr. James Halverson. It was before Senator Hart's hearings last summer. I do not have the date at hand.

Representative CONABLE. Thank you very much, Senator. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Well, thank you very, very much, Senator Nelson. It was most helpful and we deeply appreciate it.

Your legislation is precisely the kind of legislation that our hearings are designed to explore and to develop information on and we certainly need it and you have made a devastating case, if we had had this kind of information in the past our problem would not be nearly as acute as it is today.

Representative CONABLE. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.

[The following information was subsequently supplied for the record:]

RESPONSE OF HON. GAYLORD NELSON TO ADDITIONAL WRITTEN QUESTIONS POSED BY CHAIRMAN PROXMIRE

Question 1. I note that the new Energy Information Bureau set up by your bill would be located in the Department of Commerce. That raises several questions:

Why not the new Energy Administration? Why not the Interior Department?

Why not the FTC? The FTC has been suggested by others because it already has responsibility for collecting certain similar business information. Hopefully it is expanding this activity with its proposed "Line-of-Business" reporting, which would give data on sales, profits, etc. by product line. Also the FTC is an independent regulatory agency and, under an amendment to the Alaska pipeline bill, it no longer needs OMB clearance for its questionnaires. However, I note that section 703 (d) of your bill does impose on OMB the requirement to approve forms speedily-a very important provision.

Answer. The Senate Interior Committee has now completed four days of hearings on S. 2782-hearings which were still in the future on Jan. 21. Considerable testimony was received on the issue of where in the Federal Government the proposed National Energy Information System should be placed.

The energy information bill, S. 2782, was drafted as a joint effort by Senator Jackson and me as an enlargement of the concepts first put forward as the "Mineral Fuels Reserve Disclosure Act." That proposal was offered in two alternative versions, which were drafted as amendments to the Alaska pipeline bill. The first version (S. Amendment 303, 93d Cong.) placed the responsibility for operation of the information function in the Federal Trade Commission. The reasoning for that placement--my own initial choice-was much as stated in your question. The second version of the amendment (S. Amendment 319, 93d Cong.) placed the responsibility in the General Accounting Office, primarily in the interests of consistency with the Senate-passed Energy Policy Act, S. 70. In drafting S. 2782, Senator Jackson and I chose an independent new bureau of the Department of Commerce, to be a co-equal sister agency of the Bureau of the Census, as a good, neutral site for the information function. Our reasoning was that the information-gathering and analysis function would be done better if it were completely divorced from regulatory functions-a consideration which, if accepted, would rule out the new FEA (Federal Energy Administration) as well as the FTC and the FPC.

The Nixon administration is now strongly supporting the FEA as the best interim home of the National Energy Information System, and the proposed new Department of Energy and Natural Resources as the best permanent home. It is the administration's position that the regulatory and data-gathering functions should not be separated. Testimony at the hearings on S. 2782 was divided on the issue, with witnesses of equal credentials arguing for and against the desirability of divorcing the long-term, analytical information function from the regulatory function.

The Departments of Commerce and Interior were both criticized, by some witnesses, as inappropriate places for the new information function, because of their advocate-client relationship with industry.

In the course of much discussion to date, the Senate Interior Committee has most recently leaned most strongly in the direction of creating a new, entirely independent agency, the National Energy Information Administration, which might even-and probably should-be made an agency of the Legislative rather than the Executive Branch of Government.

Increasingly I tend to favor that approach myself, for these reasons:

(1) The FEA will necessarily have an information-gathering and analysis function of its own, sufficient to meet its own needs. The main criterion for success of FEA's information arm will be whether it provides support for FEA's policy functions and administrative directives. FEA's information arm will always and necessarily be most concerned with answering the energy information questions of the FEA administrator, and those will often be shortterm, today's-energy questions.

(2) Congress, the public, the press, small business all need a source of expert answers to their hard questions involving energy information. An independent National Energy Information Administration within the Legislative Branch could meet the need, and meet it more effectively than a mere arm or bureau of a regulatory agency in the Executive Branch. The NEIA, having access to all the basic data now collected in and out of Government, having the expert personnel and equipment required to make independent analyses and evaluations of data, and-most important-having no affiliation with any policy maker or policy or regulation, could perform a uniquely valuable function.

The NEIA would engage in model-building and report-writing, and its models and reports would be available to everyone. Congressional committees could exercise oversight functions. The criteria by which the success or failure of the agency would be judged would be, first and foremost, whether it was able to answer questions in a prompt and credible manner, whether it was able to make predictions that the passage of time would prove to have been correct, whether it was able to meet the energy information needs of all parts of the Government, industry, the press and the public, to the extent they were not able to meet those needs themselves.

(3) Very soon now, the country is going to need an information system covering all resources: protein, metals, water, fibers, and the industry that extracts, transports, processes and distributes all the necessities of human life and advanced technological society. In other words, the National Energy Information System proposed by S. 2782 will very shortly need to be redesigned and expanded into a National Resource Information System. Whatever arguments might be offered to put a National Energy Information System into the Federal Energy Administration, they can hardly apply to a National Resource Information System. This is probably the strongest argument of all against the Nixon Administration's position that the NEIA should be placed in FEA. Since the Jan. 21 hearing before your subcommittee, incidentally, I have introduced S. 3209, the National Resource Information Act, to accomplish that very purpose. The bill is pending in the Committee on Government Operations.

Question 2. The Director of the Bureau you propose would be subject to Senate confirmation, as is the Director of the Bureau of the Census. However, both these Bureaus would be under the Social and Economic Statistics Administration, and the head of that Administration is not subject to Senate confirmation. Presently that office is occupied by a Mr. Edward Failor, whose only known qualification is that he is a loyal Republican. Would it not be desirable if that office were also subject to Senate confirmation.

I presume you envisage that the Director of this new Bureau would be a competent, non-partisan professional? I know you are familiar with the reluctance of the present Administration to make non-partisan professional appointments to the statistical agencies. I would put great stress on building a legislative history about the kind of person we want in this new job.

Answer. I agree with all these points. The Social and Economic Statistics Administration was created, not by statute, but by a departmental order (Department Organization Order 35-4A) signed on Dec. 23, 1971 by then Secretary of Commerce Maurice H. Stans. The order transferred to the new SESA, as its major components, the Bureau of the Census and the Office (renamed "Bureau" by the order) of Business Economics. The effect was to make the Director of the Census, a statutory office requiring presidential appointment and Senate confirmation, co-equal with another newly-named "Bureau" director and subordinate to a newly created Administrator, neither of whose offices has statutory standing nor requires Senate confirmation. It would probably be most useful for the Congress to provide, by law, for presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of both the SESA Administrator and the Bureau of Business Economics Director. While the energy information bill, S. 2782, does not take those steps, it does provide for presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of the position of Director of Energy Information, which would be a statutory office on a par with that of Director of the Census.

The bill also provides, in section 104, that the Director of Energy Information will be a person "who, as a result of . . . training, experience, and attainments, is well qualified for this position." The chairman's suggestion that this explicit provision of the proposed statute should also be buttressed by a strong legislative history on the point is well taken.

37-143 O 74 - 16

Chairman PROXMIRE. I would like to ask the next three witnesses to come forward as a panel. We are very fortunate to have these distinguished men: John B. Rigg, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of Interior; Julius Shiskin, Commissioner, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and John Hodges, Director of Statistics, American Petroleum Institute.

Suppose we proceed with Mr. Rigg first, Mr. Shiskin second, and Mr. Hodges last. May I say in view of the fact we have you three gentlemen and we would like to question you, if you could confine your remarks, if possible, to about 10 minutes, and your full prepared statements will be printed in the record and we would appreciate that very much.

Mr. Rigg, I guess you had two statements and one I presume you are going to present and one is for the record, is that right?

Mr. RIGG. That is right.

Chairman PROXMIRE. They will both be printed in full. Please proceed, Mr. Rigg.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. RIGG, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR; ACCOMPANIED BY V. E. MCKELVEY, DIRECTOR, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY; JOHN D. MORGAN, JR., ACTING DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF MINES; BILL ELLIOTT, DIVISION OF FOSSIL FUELS, BUREAU OF MINES; AND ROBERT RIOUX, CONSERVATION DIVISION, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Mr. RIGG. Mr. Chairman, I wish to tell you I have accompanying me today here Mr. V. E. McKelvey, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey; Mr. John Morgan, Acting Diretor, Bureau of Mines; Bill Elliott, Division of Fossil Fuels, Bureau of Mines; and Robert Rioux, Conservation Division, U.S. Geological Survey.

It is a pleasure to appear before you and this subcommittee to describe the activities of the Department of the Interior with regard to the collection and publication of statistics on energy minerals. With your permission I shall submit a prepared statement for the record, and confine my oral remarks to the highlights of the more detailed prepared statement.

In the face of the current energy situation, we are aware of the need for accurate and quickly obtained information on refinery data and stocks and other energy information.

New methods are currently under review in the executive branch and we expect to forward our recommendations to the Congress shortly.

In his address of Saturday, January 20, President Nixon said:

I will propose legislation requiring companies to provide a constant accounting of their inventory, their production and their cost and their reserves. This legislation will make it possible for the Federal Government to monitor these supplies independently.

Pending this action, Administrator Simon has announced that the Federal Energy Administration has begun its own audits of refiners stocks as well as compliance with Federal price ceilings.

For many years the Bureau of Mines has engaged in the collection, assembly, analysis, and publication of a large amount of data on all of the energy minerals: Coal, natural gas, petroleum, and uranium.

In addition data are also collected on helium and two minerals of potential use as sources of energy, oil shale and thorium. The data collected and published by the Bureau are extensively used at all levels by public and private agencies and individuals. They are derived from a wide assortment of collection points and procedures: Voluntary industry canvasses, exchange information from State agencies and other Federal offices; personal contacts with industry leaders; publications and meetings of trade associations and professional socieites; U.S. Geological Survey resource reports; special studies, by our personnel and under grants to universities, and numerous other individual contacts, both foreign and domestic.

The data collected are assembled and published in a number of forms the best known of which are fuel commodity sections of the annual "Minerals Yearbook," a series of mineral industry surveys dating from 1883. Numerous monthly, quarterly, and annual reports describe current operations of production, processing transportation, consumption and sales, and foreign trade as they relate to energy minerals. A periodic survey of the mineral industries, "Mineral Facts and Problems," is published every 5 years, with a chapter dedicated to each of the fuel resources. In addition, a large number of monographic reports on specialized aspects of energy minerals are published each year.

We believe that in general the data provided by this effort have been adequate in the past. Analysis of the information provided led scientists and engineers into research on oil shale and coal gasification with sufficient leadtime to develop invaluable basic knowledge for current expanded research in these areas. Metallurgical and mining research programs also were guided into such useful research as that on special property materials for nuclear energy generation and on advanced mining methods for coal and oil shale.

Industry has made wide use of Bureau data for commercial decisions. Although it is difficult for us to measure the data's adequacy for such use, our working relationship with industry invites criticism, comment, and suggested improvements. The system is not static, but responds to expressed changes in requirements. Our confidence in the adequacy of the information system was supported by a survey in 1968 by Opinions Research Corp. on Bureau of Mines statistical publications. The survey revealed that the diverse audience for these reports found them generally adequate.

There have been special circumstances, however, under which rapid change has overrun the ability to adapt to new and sometimes critical requirements. In wartime, data collection has had to be expanded to meet needs of defense agencies. When the envirionmental and land-use issues blossomed almost overnight, they revealed shortcomings in our basic data that have not yet been fully overcome.

We do believe we have met Interior's and congressional needs in these areas, but have found it difficult and costly to satisfy EPA.

The latest test of adequacy is the energy crisis. Its approach was clearly evident, and Interior Department officials have warned of its