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After Petroleum — What?

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After Petroleum — What? , -22 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST March J. 1928 I I ~ o N VIEW of the now familiar oil over· The difficulty in making any estimate of the produetion, with its unnecessary drain on invisible supply of petroleum grows out of the the natural reserve, the question of future fact that the discovery of crude is not yet an supply becomes increasingly acute. People are beginning Each year has witnessed some new inroad upon oil. Its exact art, although oil science has made many great to wonder if the carriage manufacturer is coming back growing employment in the home is only one of many advances during the last five years. Oil is hidden and pro­ to his former prestige, and whether the faded letters instances. The manufacture and sale o( oil burners to duction therefore becomes a finding industry. Favorable­ IIL-i-v-.e-r-y S-t--a-b-l-e," now supplanted by the more warm the American household has increased more than looking lands become oil fields when the drill has proved ~thetic "G-a-r-a-g-e," on endless buildings, will have to 6000 per cent in the last three years. They warm every the area, and only then. It means that all estimates must be restored. Is a nation on wheels, as it were, going back class, from cottage dweller to lodger in skyscraper hotel necessarily be conjectural. to the hoof so far as daily transport is concerned? and apartment house. Following the constitution of the Federal Oil Conserva­ There is mOTe truth than idle speculation in this sur­ Behind all this is the expanding maw of the American tion Boa'rd by President Coolidge at the end of 1924, the mise. Although it may be postponed longer than we think, motor car. The high-powered vehicle is the demand of the American Petroleum Institute named a committee of the time is inevitable when we shall be obliged to depend public, let gasoline consumption be what it may. In 1918 eleven, which made an exhaustive investigation of the for 'motor fuel on imported crude or a synthetic liquid dis­ we had just passed the 1,000,000 mark with automobiles. petroleum resources of the United States. Their report tilled from coal, lignite or shale. This concluding article Today we have 23,225,000. Optimists in the business forms the best basis for ascertaining just how much oil is therefore will deal with still available. The the vital matter of oil committee estimated exhaustion and, what that the well. and is more important, the fields then producing agencies available to would yield a future stave off the era of sub-- production, by ordi­ stitutes. Into it must nary Clowing and also enter an answer pumping methods, o( to the pregnant inter- 5,300,000,000 barrels rogation: After petro- , of oil. These fields had leum- what? aireadyyielded a grand It is part of the total of 8,000,000,000 chronic paradox which barrels. is oil that in an hour when superabundance The Surplus gluts the market and depresses the price, in T WAS lurther most instances below I pointed out that for cost of production, the each barrel that had specter of famine been produced, and (or should arise. This ap­ each barrel that would prehension, however, be obtained by the I is both timely and well methods then in vogue, I founded, Check the at least two barrels re­ flow of petroleum and mained in the ground. you paralyze power Owing to the haste Ilnd progress all the that ~arks the oil op­ way (rom (arm to (ac­ eration, a maximum of tory and ship. Petro­ only 25 per cent of the leum has become crude in the well is re­ increasingly indispen­ covered. Manyexperts sable to civilization on (eel that the ratio of land and water. two barrels recoverable In the preceding for each barrel already paper you saw how produced is too small, the current crisis, born and that three and , 01 excess, bas brought possibly four will even­ tbe need of conserv­ tually be available. ancy home as never Using the minimum before, and that BOme recovery of two barrels kind of safeguard, for one means that ac­ whether voluntary or cording to the 1924 7h . N ew V . ntura A u"nu . Field California. 'n calcu lation 16,000,- involuntary, will • emerge. This is only 000,000 barrels are in one phase of a bigger problem. No matter how we bulwark predict that we shall double this number in ten years. the reserve, This is based on the 8,000,000,000 barrela Nature's store, we must be prepared eventually to sup­ Whether the prediction comes true or not, the fact remains produced up to that time in the proved areas. Add to this plant her gift with a manufactured product. Conservation tqat for motor transport, as for nearly every other major the crude recoverable by the same ratio from the known can merely prolong the life of an essential raw material line of human activity, we must have more and more oil reserve o( roughly 5,300,000,000 barrels and you have a doomed to ultimate extinction within our confines. to keep the wheels turning. total of 26,600,000,000 barrels. Not all this ocean of liquid The first step in this final appraisal is a recapitulation If we had an inexhaustible reserve of oil underground, gold can be salvaged economically, but the oil is there and of the big facts, notably concerning production. We can­ there would be no commentary on this expanding consump-­ is obtainable in some way. not probe into the future without knowing something tion. The reverse is true, because the store is highly prob­ The committee of eleven report naturally took no cog­ about the past. Oil and its products have become 80 cheap lematical. You cannot block out oil in the same way that nizance of the flush fields brought in after its work ended. and accessible that few people stop to wonder about their our reserves of coal, iron and copper are surveyed. Fur­ Since then new· areas with gush yields have combined to source. In the same way they fail to appreciate the grow­ thermore, coal stays put and oil does not. A testator is bring about the existing overproduction. At the same time ing depletion of the hoard. never certain that his bequest of oil land will be productive they will leave a wider area for recovery through intensive at that distant time when it is drilled by his heirs. This effort. Assets With the Wanderlust results from the nature of crude. It has the wanderlust. Chief among these recent bonanzas is Seminole in Okla­ , Because of its roving disposition, it must be garnered, once homa, whose five pools produced 108,572,461 barrels in INCE Colonel Drake put down his first well in 1859, the the oil well begins to flow. Otherwise adjacent areas take fourteen months. While this series is being written four SUnited States hB8 produced nearly 10,500,000,000 bar­ toll, big wildcat wells in the same area have been brought in, rels of petroleum. The annual output has grown from 209,- Any analysis of the situation must start with an inquiry adding more pools to the field. Under the curtailment 557,000 barrels in 1910 to900,000,000, which WB8 the record into how much oil is left in the ground for our future needs. agreement they have been pinched to 100 barrels a day of last year. We supply70 per cent of the entire world yield. Like every other feature of the business, this is uncertain. each, awaiting the time when the older pools in the district There are many men in the business who believe that if All predictions 80 far have been in error. For forty years shall have had a considerable drop in output. Drilling will our present prodigality continues, this percentage will be dire forecasts of imminent exhaustion ruled. not be delayed long, however, and by early summer these exactly reversed and we sh.n be holding the short end, As recently as 1921 statisticians maintained that our prospective areas, unless drastically held in check, may With increased production bas come a big advance in domestic output would be at its peak when 500,000,000 repeat the 1927 overproduction. use. We consume, with exports, 1,000,000 barrels of gaso­ barrels were obtained. Yet last year, as you have just There appears to be no end to new discoveries and line a day. In 1927 the per capita absorption in the United seen, we produced 900,000,000 barrela, and the figure would production in the West Texas field. In the now famous States WB8 93,9 ganons, while lor the rest 01 the world the have been higher but for the curtailment program at Yates pool two 20,OOO-barrel wells and one 65,OOO-barrel rate was 3.3 gallons. Seminole and Yates, well were discovered late in November. It is estimated 23 THE SIlTURD.IlY EVENING POST• that the potential daily output of Yates is more than being bucketed- that is, 300,000 barrels. As at Seminole, it is curtailed through actually dipped for oil- in agreement among producers. The limit here is 30,000 these countries . barrels a day. The Winkler field, also in Texas, would have Colonel Drake used a a daily output of 100,000 barrels if the wells, now shut drill and set casing in a down, were being operated.
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