THE WORLD'S OIL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4185, 13 September 1939, Page 5

THE WORLD'S OIL

STRONG CONTROL BY BRITAIN. RESOURCES OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES. Britain controls the majority of the world output of oil outside the United States and Russia, through the tentacles of her trade, finance, and treaties in the Near East, Venezuela, Canada, the Dutch East Indies, the Persian Gulf, .and such far-flung unconsidered producers as British India, British Burma, Egypt, and British Borneo (said Wentfworth Day in a London Daily Mail article of recent date).

The normal peace-time consumption of oil of Great Britain is more than 12,000,000 tons. That rate of consumption is increasing by 500,000 to 600,000 tons a year; and we have no difficulty in getting it here.

But of that vast consumption of oil products, less than 8 per cent is produced in Britain. Our main supply conies from the United States, the Dutch East Indies, Venezuela, and Iran.

Greater Germany’s consumption of oil is 7,000,000 tons a year in peace time. She produces a little over onethird of it herself.

The addition of the oil in Austria, and even her superlatively ingenious methods for making synthetic oils, cannot bring her oil supplies up to anything like her peace-time requirements. In all, she produces about 2,400,000 tons of oil a year, including synthetic petrol, benzol, and motor alcohol. The rest she gets from America, the Dutch Indies, Iran, and Rumania. The first three sources of supply would be cut off the moment a war was declared.

Rumania’s oil output is not nearly so important as the man in the street imagines. The present output is about' 6,000,000 tons of crude oil, which would not nearly suffice to cover Germany’s war-time requirements, even should she be able to reach and control the Rumanian oilfields. Also, Rumanian oil must go to Germany either by the Danubian route or by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar, commanded by British guns.

Our oil supplies are also brought to us by sea. But we happen to command the seas; and there is more than one route by which oil can be brought to Britain should the Mediterranean be made dangerous.

The three great refineries—Abadan on the Persian Gulf and Curacao and Aruba in the Dutch West Indies—can supply more than twice as much oil as Britain needs for normal civil requirements. In addition, we can obtain oil from the Dutch East Indies, with its 7,700,000 tons per annum; Iraq, with its 4,300,000 tons; Colombia, more than 3,000,000 tons; Trinidad, 2,700,000 tons; Peru, 2,200,000; and others of less capacity; and from the United States, the world’s largest supplier, and our friend.

The total output of crude oil during the first six months of this year throughout the world was no less than 139,609,000 metric tons. Britain, her allies, and her friends can call on the vast majority of that huge production.

Italy, already short of oil, has even had to export it from her own meagre stocks to Abyssinia. Japan, which uses at least 4,000,000 tons of oil a year, produces less than 300,000 tons of it.

Russia produces about 30,000,000 tons a year. She needs it all.

Oil comes to Britain by tanker. The total tonnage of the world’s tanker fleet for this year is 11,436,880. Great Britain and her Dominions own 3,264,241 tons, the United States 2,800,780 tons, and—surprisingly— Norway comes third with 2,117,381 tons.

Holland is fourth with more than half a million tons of tanker shipping, Japan has 429,000 tons, Italy 426,000 tons, and Germany a mere 256,093 tons. The British Empilre, United States, and Norway, in fact, own more than 71 per cent of the existing tanker tonnage. So that in the event of war the bulk of the tankers would be British and American.

As for the protection of our sea routes, we have the biggest navy in the world to attend to that. That navy can re-fuel on oil at almost any port in the world. In the Mediterranean alone battleships can re-fuel at Cyprus, Port Said, Alexandria, Tripoli, and the French ports. Under the new Turkish Pact and the guarantee to Greece those harbours would also be open. At Port Suez there are some of the biggest oil-storage tanks in the world.

Our ships can bunker at every big port in India, at Rangoon in Burma, at every big harbour in South, East, and Wiest Africa. Trinidad, in the West Indies, produces nearly 3,000,000 tons of its own oil, Canada nearly 1,000,000 tons, and Egypt more than 250,000 tons. No British ship need fear an oil shortage on the seaways of the world.