Part of the reason for the unbridled growth in what might be called the takeover industry has been attributed to oil companies choosing the easy way out. Instead of exploring for oil and gas they capture another company, along with its ever more lucrative reserves. In buying Gulf, for instance, Socal spent $13.2 billion but got $15.4 billion worth of reserves after discounting for the cost of buying the company. Texaco got $10.4 billion in reserves when it snatched Getty.

Quite simply, all the easy oil has already been pumped. Exploration costs per barrel now stand at about $15--which leaves little room for profit on a barrel of oil commanding a $29 world price. Last year the 20 largest oil companies in the U.S. found only 60 percent as much petroleum as they refined.

But more fundamentally, corporate takeovers are fabulously worthwhile. Pickens made $760 million profit in his "unsuccessful" effort to buy Gulf, and Gulf's stockholders ended up with an additional $5.3 billion.

Although Congress has just recently woken up to the danger of the oil takeovers--not to mention similar horror stories in the steel and railroad industries--nobody has done anything to stop them. The 1961 Reagan tax cuts for corporations gave them the fuel for their orgiastic frenzy of violent buyouts: the impotence of his attorney general in stopping them has acted as encouragement.

Reagan would do well to open his eyes to what these buyouts mean for his rosy economic plans. While his huge budget deficit is the most obvious culprit in tightening up the loan market, $12 billion and $13 billion loans to oil companies to engage in utterly unproductive takeovers further restrict available credit with nothing to show afterward except inflated (or bruised) corporate egos and wealthy lawyers. (Socal's bankers and attorneys walked off with $60 million when the dust settled.)

In addition, when the Texaco-Getty and Socal-Gulf deals go through--Reagan's Justice Department is unlikely to require more than that they unload some of their departments to make the companies seem less, huge--fully 57 percent of the nation's oil reserves will be controlled by just eight companies, and their hold on refining and distributing will be strengthened.

It would, indeed, be very surprising if Reagan's Justice Department requires more than token adjustments in the new $50 billion Socal-gulf company. Reagan can claim no significant anti-trust prosecutions during his tenure--despite the mergers that have resulted in 30,000-mile railroad giants like Norfolk Southern and Southern Pacific-Santa Fe, and the recent rumblings in the steel industry where U.S. Steel, Republic Steel and LTV Corporation, three of the five biggest steel companies in the country, are planning mergers and acquisitions.

Deregulation should not mean encouragement for corporate moguls to attack each other in heady games involving billions of dollars' worth of the nation's potential seed money. The anti-trust legislation is already in place to fight back against the clustering of wealth and power in a small group of oilmen and profiteering kamikazes--and it must be used.