NAZI OIL SUPPLY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 45, 23 February 1942, Page 5

NAZI OIL SUPPLY

SHORTAGE A MYTH Correspondent Reports Large Synthetic Stocks Rec. 11 a.m. LONDON, Feb. 22. Reports that Germany is short of ?&w a *i e « ridiculed b y the British United Press correspondent on the German frontier. He says that Germany is building further synthetic plants, the latest of which is situated in Upper Silesia, capable of Eroducing 1,000,000 tons a year ince the outbreak of the Russian war German synthetic production has increased by 100,000 tons a month. Synthetic plants are at present consuming one-third of Germany's coai output

Huge oil dumps are being built in areas that cannot be touched by R.A.F. bombing. Germany at the outbreak possessed 12,000,000 to 16,000,000 tons of oil, instead of 6,000,000 previously estimated, and German stocks were never allowed to fall below one year's peacetime requirements. Until recently petrol for non-military consumption was astonishingly plentiful.

The only major difficulty seems to be lubricating oil but the position in this regard is hard to ascertain.