THE MOTOR.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 109, 8 May 1912, Page 4

THE MOTOR.

(By "Autos.") THE PROBLEM OF PETROL. The problem of petrol at present overshadows everything else in the motor world of this quarter of the globo. If the motive power is wanting, things stand still, and, even if the" present shortage passes away, .and dnco more we abound in motor spirit, we should not forget that there is still a very serious problem to be faced, not in any temporary shortage of petrol, but in the gradual failure of petrol resources altogether. Of recent years the consumption has mounted up enormously. In the country it has mol'o than doubled, and the tremendous influx of foreign ca-r«, a-nd the general boom in motoring only accentuates the position. New Zealand is by no means unique in its unfortunate shortage of petrol, with a corresponding rice jn price. In the Old Country there has also been a serious rise. "The Motor" (London) puts it this way: — AN INCREASE OF 50 PER CENT. When motoring first commenced, the price of petrol was lOd a gallon: to-day it is ls'6d, or, deducting 3d a gallon duty, Is 3d, making an increase of 50 per cent.? with no great prospect of the price falling in the immediate future and no particular guarantee that it will not go higher. And it must be remembered that this price of Is 6d a gallon is the price only in London and in other ports which. aro distributing centres for motor spirit, and that the price is increased (theoretically)' from £d to l^d a gallon, according to the distance that tho spirit has to travel from the distributing centres to the place of sale. Wo say that these are theoretical increases because, as a matter of fact, the cdnsumer is largely in the hands of the dealers, who add on from Id to 3d a gallon to chance customers, according to faucy, averring, if the price be questioned, that they have to pay unduly heavy carriage —which is seldom true, as tho suppliers deliver tho epUit to them by direct road service. SPIRIT OF INFERIOR QUALITY. In comparing the prices of ten years ago with those of to-day, it must not be forgotten that lOd a gallon was paid for .680 spirit, whereas the spirit obtainable now is invariably about .725. j The lighter spirit is not exactly unobtainable, but is nearly so, its price being probably about 2s a gallon. The motoring community consented to employ the heavier spirit when it became patent that a much greater quantity of heavy spirit than of the lighter grades could be distilled from a given quantity of the raw material. This has" meant the possibility of a very big. production ot spirit. The quantity < imported into this country in 1911 was .over 64,500,000 gallons, and, if wo place, tho average wholesale selling ' price of' this at' 9d a gallon, tho value of this quantity of spirit was over £2,400,000, and it is not unfair to assume that, besides tho maintenance of big organisations, a good "living profit" was made out of this sum. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? The wholesale people say that Is 6d a, gallon is quite a reasonable figure when the duty and the retailer's profit have been deducted, but no one yet has given us a reasonable explanation of the sudden nee from Is 2d to Is 6d a gallon. We have heard it suggested that the shortage of tank steamers haa led to at increase of ireight rates, but when It is remembered that,* on the highest freight rates, the freight is only a fraction of a penny per gallon, we cannot look to this as > being tho expla-. i nation of a rise ,of 4d a gallon. More- ' over> in ihe United St&f-es, w'liere petrol is a homo production, unaffectod by a shortage of freight tonnage, the prico of petrol' has risen from 4£d per gallon in the summer to s£d at tho end of the year, and 6d a fortnight ago —thle being an increase of 33£ per cent. The ,only explanation of this is that the price of crude oil haa been advancing, and that the advances in the price of petrol have been the necessary adjustments to mako it correspond with that of the crude oil. FROM A TECHNICAL POINT OF VIEW. , Discussing the question in a quite unbiased spirit, and from a purely technical point of view, a writer in the London Times Engineering Supplement points out that petrol is the key to the oil situation. A large and ever-inoreas-ing demand for petrol, accompanied by a steady decrease ia the sale of burning oil .and other refined products, a huge increase in the supplies of heavy oil suits&le only for fuel, and, in many cases, a falling-off in the supplies of high-grade oils of high petrol-content, have led to a state of affairs in the petroleum world which cannot be regarded as satisfactory. With the ordinary processes for oil refining, an increased production of petrol is accompanied by an increase in 'products such as kerosene and lubricating oils, the consumption of which does not keep pace with that of petrol. It is well known that, oil wars and pricecutting apart, considerable difficulty is being encountered in the disposal of burning oil, particularly at remunerative prices. HOPES NOT REALISED. The hopes raised of a largely-increased, consumption of burning oil in internal combustion engines have not been realised. An efficient kerosene engine possessing the flexibility and adaptable qualities of tho petrol engine has, notwithstanding optimistic reports to the coutiary, btill to arrive. Lubricating oils, owing to the increasing use of interval combustion engines of all kinds, must now bo constituted to posses physical properties different from those formerly required, and this fact necessitates changes in the refining and mixing of the constituents of natural petroleum suitable to the purpose. Whatever the requirements, however, the chemical composition and physical properties,of natural petroleum, as it comes from the well, remain the same, and the quantities of the various products obtainable have the same limitation, with one marked exception. If desired, the quantity of burning oil can be largely increawjd at the expense of the heavier oil, by meuis of the process known as "cracking." This piocess in its day was not valuable, but at the present time, as increased supplies of kerosene are not required, it is falling off in favour and in use. Under improved methods of distillation it is, however, possible out of heavy naphthas to recover rather mo'-e petrol than could formerly be obtained. Pennsylvania naphtha still contains the largest amount of petrol in the world. The proportion is some 50 per cent., while the average the world over is probably about 25 per cent, of petrol lo the total volume of naphtha. The writer is optimistic of the future. He considers that to whatever extent the petrol demand may expand, developments are at hand which bid fair to meet it at every point, and which will make the petrol "famine" foreshadowed from time >to time in motor journals well nigh impossible—impossible, that is, so long tta ample supplies of heavy oils continue to be opened up, and of this there seems to be little doubt.