WORLD’S OIL SUPPLY

Southland Times, Issue 18939, 12 May 1923, Page 2

WORLD’S OIL SUPPLY

THE FIGHT FOR CONTROL. Oil now looms in New York as largely in public discussion and as a source of friction as the Mosul questions at Lausanne. According to a New York World editorial recently, the foreign policy of Washington is obsessed by oil, and the Secretary of State should be called the “Secretary for Oil.” If these allegations are true, Washington can retort that the United States, with the increasing necessity for oil, is greatly concerned in defending the American campaign for oil, and has the support of the most powerful interests. The>6ecretary for the Interior has started a movement to prevent foreign oil magnates, principally British, from enjoying equal opportunities in American oil-fields, while they are themselves suspected of “working constantly to prevent American oil companies from obtaining equal privileges in other parts of the world.” Notice has been served on the Royal Dutch-Shell group and subsidiary companies in America to appear before the Interior Department, and the Secretary of the Interior has asked the Federal 'Trade Commissioner to sit with him in the hearings to ascertain whether foreign companies are denying reciprocity to Americans. If he secures evidence that American oil interests abroad are being denied reciprocity—in the Dutch colonies, for instance—America has laws and discretionary power, it is represented, which may restrict the operations of foreign-owned corporations on American territory, and will ask whether foreign companies shall be admitted to operate on American public lands and Indian lands. Congress in 1920 enacted laws forbidding the acquisition of properties by nationals of any foreign country which denied reciprocity to Americans, but what should be done on Indian lands is a discretionary matter. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the Shell-Union Oil Company ot Delaware controls about 240,950 acres of oil lands, 752 miles oi trunk pipe lines, five refineries, and about 3.5 per cent, of the American output. It is estimated by some authorities that the Royal Dutch-Shell Company holds 93 per cent, of the total area of oil-producing lands in the earth’s surface, whereas the oil supply of the United States is comparatively restricted, and experts differ as to how long ?4exican production can continue.