Underground Oil Reserves Reported Ample for Years

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 132, 5 June 1937, Page 11

Underground Oil Reserves Reported Ample for Years

NEW YORK. —Sufficient underground oil reserves to slake the motor age’s enormous thirst for gasoline for several years to come have been reported to the American Petroleum Institute.

Its committee on petroleum reserves estimated proven oil reserves of the United States on Jan. 1 at 13,063,000,000 barrels, an increase of 886,000 over llio comparable figure a year previous despite record-breaking output and gasoline demand last year. New oil pools and development of old ones, the committee said, have been more than sufficient to cover the 2,044,000,000 barrels taken out of the ground in 1935 and 1930. The figures reminded oil men of early postwar sea*fes over possible early exhaustion of petroleum supplies in the United States. In common with other commodities, however, there has been a moderate decline in crude oil stocks above the ground. Ax tell J. Byles, president of the institute pointed out only “known and proven reserves’ * figures in the estimate. “It. takes no account of possible —indeed certain—future discoveries,” he said. ‘The figures do not mean the country has available only 13,063,000,000 barrels of oil but that it has proved reserves up to that amount. “The probability is that these proven reserves constitute only a small portion of the supply which will be made available. “But these reserves do assure that there is no imminent danger of shortage. The known and proven reserves of to-day will be supplemented by new discoveries. Beyond this there is the definite knowledge of many possible substitutes, obtainable by known processes and in substantially inexhaust ible quantities, at reasonable prices.”