The Wanganui Herald (Published Daily.) TUESDAY, JULY 27, 1920. OIL SUPPLIES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160712, 27 July 1920, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald (Published Daily.) TUESDAY, JULY 27, 1920. OIL SUPPLIES.

Consumers of benzine, kerosene, and other petroleum products will not find much comfort in a recent cable item .from New York, which states that plans are being made to control oil consumption and to ration supplies. Existing supplies, it is further stated, will not meet the demand, and it is impossible to augment them. This latter statement is rather startling considering the enormous oil measures which exist in the United States and Mexico, which, despite the great drain on them, cannot be nearly exhausted yet. Whether the cause is labour troubles, or political turmoil as in the case of Mexico, or merely a commercial trick we have no means of knowing. The fact to be faced is that rationing seems certain, and that if this be adopted in the United States, the prospect of New Zealand getting adequate supplies is far from rosy. Of course the United States and Mexico are rot the only sources of oil supply in the world, but the others are, unfortunately, more or less locked up. The region around Baku, on the Caspian Sea, is a great oil producer, but the present chaos in Russia puts it out of court as a source of supply, been utterly smashed, and it will been utterly smashed, and it iwll probably be years before it is producing again. There are vast supplies in Mesopotamia, but the disturbed conditions prevailing there offer no guarantee that Mesopotamia will he able to relieve the oil shortage. There are also vast deposits in British Borneo, and some years ago it was thought that the development of these was to be a great thing for the British Empire, and was going a long way towards cutting down the monopoly of the Standard Oil Company of America. But somehow or other, the Borneo supply has dropped out of sight, and so far as this country is concerned it seems to be only a memory. The factors above alluded to have naturally given the Standard Oil Company and other American oil concerns a splendid opportunity to fasten their grip on our markets, and they practically now control the situation so far as New Zealand is concerned. And now, with the news that they are about to ration their own customers in America the case of New Zealand oil consumers is likely to be a very unpleasant one before very long.