SOVIETSKI GAZ

The Soviet bureaucracy is the world's most successful conservationist: It sits on the world's most plentiful natural wealth, but it is so incompetent that it cannot get it out of the ground.

Not without detente, that is. The American imperialists have the technological know-how to get the gas from under Siberia to liquefy it, and they have the money to finance the ventures too. Detente, comrade imperialists You do it for us.

One who did not think much of that idea was Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-Pa.). He asked the General Accounting Office to take a look whether the US Export-Import Bank had been granting any credits to the Soviets. $255 million of it, reported the GAO, at only 6% interest, and without the slightest legal basis, since such credits are part of the Trade Bill which has so far failed to clear Congress. The Soviets have also applied for $49.5 million in credits for 45% of the exploration costs of the Yakutsk project. And the Eximbank had given preliminary clearance for that, too. Sen. Schweiker has asked the Eximbank immediately to suspend all further consideration of illegal credits.

More information of how good the Soviets are at keeping their word in such deals was available from Mr. Rudolf von Benningsen-Forder, president of West Germany's state-controlled oil company Veba AG. During the Arab embargo, the Soviets had been slowing deliveries of oil and raising its price. Last year, deliveries were reduced by 16% or 10,800 b/d, and out-Arabing the Arabs, the Soviets raised the price to $16 a barrel, almost double the price of MidEast oil. West Germany might have to reconsider technolgical cooperation with Russia, said Benningsen, if it is established that Soviet officials deliberately reneged on their promises. In any case, Veba AG is saying no thank you, and is now getting oil from cheaper and more reliable sources.

Ostpolitik or detente, both are smelly one-way streets. Sen. Schweiker will shortly introduce a bill to block the Soviet liquid gas deal and save the money for developing domestic resources