The tideland oil fight currently raging in the Capitol has become a gigantic political card game. The deck includes the biggest lobbies in Congressional history, divergent social philosophies, charges of thievery and corruption, and numerous side issues. the stakes are oil, currently the nation's most important natural resource. Peacetime use of oil has steadily increased, creating an unexpected and unfilled post-war demand, and its wartime value has made the possession of large oil reserves a modern prerequisite of modern warfare.

Argument in Congress, after an 11-year history, is reaching its climax in this session with the inclusion of oil in the President's State of the Union message. Committee hearings on the controversy have attracted so many different issues,--states rights, conservation, and national defense--that the basic problem is often obscured.

The Tideland Oil problem started with the discovery of off-shore oil deposits in California at the turn of the century. Not much was done with this discovery until the end of the twenties. Large-scale development of the area began in 1933 with the perfection of directional drilling, which allowed the necessary machinery to be on land. By 1947, California was receiving nearly $4 million in annual royalties from its off-shore oil. The importance of Tideland Oil has greatly increased with the more recent prospecting in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Over 2 1/2 million acres of the Gulf have already been leased for oil development, although this is still a wildeat area with only a few producing wells. But vast sums are being poured into the development and prospecting of Gulf oil deposits, making the project in the words of "Fortune" magazine "the biggest gamble any U. S. industry has over made."

Ownership of tidelands oil was originally regarded to reside in the States. A long history of Supreme Court decisions had affirmed in strong language that the States controlled the tidelands. In 1933, when prospectors applied to the Interior Department for federal leases to tideland oil deposits, Harold Ickes said, "Title to the soil under the ocean within the three-mile limit is in the State of California, and the land may not be appropriated except by authority of the State..."

In 1937, Ickes changed his mind. After a conference with President Roosevelt, he decided to hold lease applications and start legal action to determine ownership of the oil lands. Resolutions to assert United States ownership were introduced in Congress in 1937 and 1939 but were not passed, and the issue died down during the war. In 1947, Attorney General Tom Clark brought legal action directly against the State of California to bring the case under the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court issued its now famous 6-2 California Decision on June 23, 1947. Justice Hugo Black's majority decision said that the United States possesses "paramount rights in and full dominion and power over" the lands under consideration. The Court further stated that the "State of California has no title thereto or property interest therein." The reasoning behind the majority decision was that former decisions referred to tidelands, and the strict definition of tidelands is the land covered by the ebb and flow of the tides. No court ruling had ever been made covering the area between this tideland definitely owned by the states and the three-mile limit claimed by the United States.

It is important, however, that the Court did not say that the federal government owned this land. When Tom Clark later asked the Court to issue a degree declaring that the United States had proprietary interests, the Court refused and stuck by its doctrine of paramount rights.

The net result of the Court decision is that Congress definitely has the right to dispose of the land as it sees fit. Some interesting legal controversy has, however, arisen outside the government. Since this land was not given to California in its original land grant and since the federal government does not own it, the land is claimed by 21 bands of California Indians. But the government is continuing its well established policy of ignoring Indian demands.

Two tideland bills are now facing Congress. One bill says that ownership of the disputed lands resides in the States; the other sets up a system of federal ownership and development of the lands. The former was passed by Congress last year and vetoed by President Truman. It is over these bills that the controversy rages.

(This is the first in a series of two articles on the tideland oil problem. The second will appear in Friday's CRIMSON.)