OIL INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 11

OIL INDUSTRY

THE WELLS OF AMERICA

BRIGHT FUTURE PREDICTED

The "Christian Science Monitor" in a report covering the midyear meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, says experts predicted that in the future—maybe 50 years hence—it should be possible to run a car well over 50,000 miles without maintenance operations other than periodical tightening of nuts and bolts and occasional replenishing of oil to assure proper crank case levels.

They had a word of good cheer for the housewife, too, announcing the petroleum industry is on the verge of marketing a cleansing agent like soap which will do its work of removing dirt whether the water used be hot or cold, hard, or soft, fresh or salt. Such detergents are already in industrial use and are soon to be adapted to domestic pui'poses.

That the "oil wells of the United States are huge, natural treasure chests holding virtually an unlimited supply of hydrocarbons from which may be made food, clothing, dyes, paper, explosives, and 4nnumerable other essential products besides motor fuels and lubricants, was revealed in other addresses.

Sufficient progress has been made in research as to the nature of hitherto unknown hydrocarbon compounds of gasoline and other petroleum products, they said, to afford convincing evidence that oil -is on the road to replacing coal tar as the nation's basic raw material for organic chemical manufacture' and will become a prolific source of many essential commodities..

Foods now laboriously produced on the farm may, if necessary, be obtained from the nation's oil wells, it was declared, scientists stating that they saw no insurmountable difficulties attending the future manufacture of starches and sugars, of carbohydrates and fats—the constituents of many foods—from petroleum.

Derivation from petroleum of the components of dyes, clothing,, and paper, was visualised as largely a matter of assorting, separating, and rearranging hydrocarbon molecules. Scientists .now know that the cellulose fibres which constitute cotton, paper, rayon, and some other products are related chemically to petroleum-pro-ducts, just as natural dyes are related chemically to coal tar, and their manufacture should involve no greater difficulties. # During the meeting plans were discussed for. a world's oil congress, such as was held in 1933 in London, to be held in the United States, in 1936. A' movement is under way to have this staged in- 1 connection with the International Petroleum Exposition which will be held in Tulsa in May.