AMERICA AND OIL

Southland Times, Issue 18972, 20 June 1923, Page 4

AMERICA AND OIL

In 1859 the United States began to produce oil commercially, with an output of about 2000 barrels, and ten years later this production had risen to nearly 28,000,000 barrels, only 2,000,000 barrels less than the world’s production at that stage. Since that time it is eetmated that there has been produced from oil sources 10,359,120,359 barrels each containing 42 U.S. gallons, and of that quantity the United States has won from the soil 6,453,074,921 barrels of 62 per cent, of the total up to the end of 1922. The tremendous increase in the development of the United States oil production has been largely due to the strange effects of energetic competition on the oilfields, which results in the rapid duplication of wells where there are small holdings, because the owner of each holding cannot afford to risk his neighbour draining his area; but the automobile engineer has played a great part in this change. In 1906 the oil industry existed chiefly for the supply of kerosene to the world, which was then consuming 33,000,000 barrels a year, chiefly for burning in lamps. In 1921 the industry produced 46,312,000 barrels of kerosene and 150,000,000 barrels of gasoline, entailing a crude oil output of 851,000,000 barrels of which the United States supplied 551,197,000. It has been argued in the United States that the republic’s consumption of oil is outstripping its production, but the figures do not support this contention. If imports from Mexico are included in the “production” tables, as an offset to the Mexican oil which is added to the “consumption” side, the position in the last four years is as follows:

Actually, therefore, the production-has been increasing at a greater rate than the consumption, and 82 per cent, of the world’s consumption of oil was handled in the United States in 1922, but this extraordinary development directs the attention of the economists to the sinister fact that the ultimate stocks of the world’s oil are being drawn on with such feverishness that the future of the oil supplies is a matter for concern.

Production. Consumption. 1913 (basis) 100 100 1919 . 162 163 1920 . 207 200 1921 , 225 198 1922 257 223