NAZIS' OIL SUPPLIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 45, 23 February 1942, Page 5

NAZIS' OIL SUPPLIES

SHORTAGE REPORTS RIDICULED

(Rec. noon.) LONDON, February 22

Reports that Germany is short of oil are x-idiculed by a correspondent of the British United Press on the German frontier. He says that Germany is building further synthetic plants, the latest of which is situated in Upper Silesia and is capable of producing one million tons a year.

Since the outbreak of the Russian war, he says, the German production of synthetic oil has increased by 100,000 tons a month. Synthetic plants at present are consuming one-third of Germany's coal output. Huge oil dumps are being built in areas which have not been touched by the R.A.F. bombing.

Germany at the outbreak of war possessed between 12,000,000 and 16,000,000 tons of oil, instead of 6,000,000 tons as previously estimated. The German stocks have never been allowed to fall below the peacetime requirements for one year. Until recently petrol for non-military consumption was astonishingly plentiful. The only major difficulty seems to be regarding lubricating oil, but the position in this respect is hard to ascertain.