THE COMING OF PETROLEUM

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 10

THE COMING OF PETROLEUM

POSSIBILITIES FOR INDUSTRIES. In an interesting little volume just' published,' entitled "The Coming ol Petroleum" (Curtie, Gardner and Co., London y some striking facts and figures have. been collected dealing with the supplies of petroleum which are known, to exist, and the possibilities of using oil' for various industrial purposes. AJi account is given of isome ot the largest ofr the ' fountain welle, or gushers, or pouters, as they ale called, which have yielded oil in Mexico, California, audi Ruseia. Of the fo\U" fountains' described none has been brought wholly kinder control, tho force of the uprush of oil being, too violent for (he appliancea available fojr "capping," or shutting in the flow, so thfot, «ie a rule, the ,bulk of tlio oil haft been Tost. One of these fptmtain*, the Lake View well, in California, started ia 1910, and spouted for ovov fifteen, months. It has bMn estibated to have produced' l,ooo,ooo torn of oil, of which about -half was saved, and at one time it! was yielding over 10,000 tons per day. An point in regard to this well is that the company which started' sboring for oil rain out of fandg when they had reached a depth of 1800 ft, whea another company took up the work, and at a dopth of 2222 ft struck on© of th« most prolific "gushers" in the world. O£ another huge " gusher," at Portrero del' Llano, in Mexico, the* capabilitiea have not -yct'beeu calculated. •• It belongs to the Mexican Eagle Company, and was " capped " in 1910, but hae not yet been allowed to give ite full flow o£ oil. It i» supposed to have produced as yot about 600,000 tons of oil, most of -which w>s, lost while the w«ll was "loo»e." Eafly in tho .preae'nt year, before the full flow could W controlled, the fountain was made to eeod about >iO,OOO barrels (about 6000 tone) T \per day into a vaet eump hole, 1 and 5000 barrels were pumped along pipes to the. coaat fov storage &nd ehipment. It hae now beea lirmly " capped/ and i» allowed to give only a few thousand barrels a day; out it was recently allowed to "perform" for the benefit of some visitor*, and (lowed at that rat© of over 100,000 barrels, or about' ls,ooo tons per day. EXPENSE OF BORING. The oxponaft of boring for one of theas "gushers' and getting it under control ualurally varies with the depth at which oil us "struck" and tho strength, of the uprush from the bed. -In many of the 'oilfield* the oil lie* in s&nd^ among strata which for purposes of general description may be compared in shape to rolling waves. The oiksand' 'stratum, originally horizontal, has been comprassed by the cooling of the earth* crust into arches and troughs^ and the result has been that the ga<7 in the »tratum, &» the , lightest of jits components hat collected in the crest» of the arches or waves, the water, a« the heaviest, has collected in the troughs, and the. oil»£and lies on the flanks. When, the drill which is sunk through the overlying strata reaches thtir oil-sand, the prefieure of the gas forces qic oil up the drill, and the fortunate driller has struck, his "gusher." But, of course, he may spend large sums before he has hi« reward. The oil-sand strajtum may) lie deep or shallow. He may be unlucky enough to start boring where no oil'heß. " He may have to drill through hard or soft substance. In Louisiana, Texas. aAd p'ari* of California, a well may be drilled for as little as £200, while in another port of California as much as £30,000 ha* been spent on ai 6ittd%well.ji ITha average price of boring a Ru«ian oiKwalio a depth of 2000 ft, including eiigine, derrick, and outfit, is about £5000 j but in Russia, a* elsewhere, experience ifi teaching better and cheaper ways of boring and methods by, whicn greater depths caft bei-eacbedj and as new oil-sand strata, have been found by boring through oil-sands already worked out, it would be difficult Ut guess the depth ,&i which oil may be expected to be found in the" future. Here, again, the potentialities of the existing oilfields cannot be calculated with any approximation to certainty.

Dodds— As one grows older there ant certain things in which it is difficult to keep up otre's interest. Don't you find it 80? HobbA— Ei— yes— there's the mortgage on my house, for example.