SYNTHETIC PETROL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19989, 4 November 1927, Page 3

SYNTHETIC PETROL

GERMANS TO FLOOD MARKET COMPETIVE PRICES. BERLIN, X)ct. 22. If the Boersen Courier is rightly informed, the great German Chemical Trust is about to open the cocks of its reservoirs at Leuna and flood ffie market with synthetic petrol. As is well known, the manufacture of this product has already been proceeding for some months at the full capacity of the plant, and the retention of the output within the high walls of Leuna has been explained by the unwillingness of the Trust to enter the market till its success is assured; The paper quoted now states that contracts for 120,000 tons of syntheths oils have actually been concluded for delivery within the present year, and that during 1928 the annual capacity of Leuna alone is to be raised to 300,000 tons.

Leuna, however, is not, it appears, the only point at which the “Interes-scn-Gemeinschaft” is raising serious competition for the petroleum wells of America and Baku. An application—successful, of course—for grading on the railways at a lower rate than prevails for fluid fuels generally has revealed the interesting fact that the Trust is also manufacturing synthetic petrol at factories in Ludwigshaven and Loetschen, the existence of which has so far been withheld from public knowledge.

Further evidence that the trust no longer has any doubts as to its ability to compete with natural oils in the world’s markets is supplied by the fact that at the present moment 12,700 workmen are engaged in erecting factories and plant for the manufacture of artificial fluid fuels. At Leuna alone the Winkler generators which are operating the new process are liquefying 4,000 tons of coal daily. To provide for expansion the Trust’s lignite mines in the Geissel Valley are now staffed by 16,500 men, and it is hoped to raise their daily output during the present year from 12,000 to 24,000 tons.

It is stated by the Courier that the efforts of the Shell and Standard Oil concerns to induce the Chemical Trust to wait a few years before throwing its synthetic petrol on to the market have been fruitless, and that the two great combinations named have had to be satisfied with participation in the Motain Company, which .will act as the chief selling agency of Leuna, and its accessory works. The contract regulaing this participation are stated to be “extraordinarily favourable” for the Chemical Trust.

Finally, we are told that the “cost of production of the new fuel renders possible a scale of prices which will allow competition with natural oils both at home and abroad.”