Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1901-01-20
The Marietta Daily Leader.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 1901.
California oil.

TWO years ago 0he trelg'ht and pas
senger receipts at Bakersfield, Califor
mia amounted to about $4,000 per
month. Since the development of the
petroleum fields of Kern river the rail-
road receipts have increased to $140,
900 per month. Within the past six
teen months $50 oil companies have
filed certificates of incorporation in the
Kern county clerks office. Professor
G. S. Young, in recent article in d
San Francisco paper, says:
Pipe lines are laid to every part Of
the field; oil tanks are found on nearly
every leasehold. At present writing
there is a tankage capacity of 100000
barrels. The Standard Oil company
has under construction three oil tanks,
with capacity of about $4,000 barrels,
and the representative of the company
says there are now ninety carloads of
material on the way for the construc-
tion of other tanks and pipe lines, and
in the near future there will be ten
tanks constructed, with a total capac-
ity of 100000 barrels. That there is an
urgent demand for still greater tank
age there is no question, and within
the next six months the Kern river dis
trict will probably have a tankage ca
pacity of nearly a million barrels of oil.
The Southern Pacific Railroad COM
pany has constructed from twelve to
fifteen miles of switches and branch
switches into the oil fields. A town
site has been laid out and depot has
been erected on the'g grounds
Every facility for the transaction of
an immense oil business will soon be
available. At the present time the |
greatest complaint against the trans
portation system is the scarcity of cars.
A representative of the Pacific Coal
Company, who recently inspected the
oil lands in the Bakersfield region,
made report to the effect that, with
oil at So cents per barrel delivered to
the consumer. not a ton of domestic
or foreipn coal would be used in san
Francisco; in fact. If a man owned a
coal mine and had his freight free, his
coal would not come into competition
with oil at that price. He made the
prediction that within the next year
coal as a fuel would be driven out of
the market. The freight rate on oil
Guiding switching charges, is 46 cents !
per barrel. The average daily output
of oil from the district is As cars Of $50 {
barrels each Professor Young says:
Fivc-year contracts have been made 8
with both the Santa Fe and Southern
Pacific Railroad companies for oil de- 7
livered on board the cars at 81 per bar a
rel. The lowest price paid in this dis v
trict for oil was that under contract II
made a day or two ago with one of the @
,a,nv oil companies for 100000 bar t,
,els at s5 cents per barrel net to the tt
ywner on board Of cars.
The demand for fue! oil in California g
Increases constantly. Oil has been a G
success in the furnaces. in stationary
engines. locomotive engines, and re- Il
,ent experiments en- the ocean steam
srs, such as the steamship Cowrie, have b
that oil is much more b
convenient fuel than coal, occupying as n
t does less space and producing a
greater rate of speed One illustration a
will give some idea of the immense fl
of fuel oil that will be used on
he two railroads running through a
between Los Angeles and m
;an Francisco. The Santa Fe Rail
DAD company has $50 engines whose B
motive power is steam from fuel OIL a
The Southern Pacific railroad company q
las forty-two engines, making 1872 en- /
ines using petroleum in their burners. tc
The average amount of oil used per
lay in an engine is about thirty bar sy
els, and therefore the total amount of n,
Ill used at the present time upon the OF
wo systems of railroads is $3.50 bar
els daily. In the two railroad sys- m
ems there are about 900 engines run h;
IIHS DtIWttl l[J5 AuSClto anu DlLi lC
Francisco. 1t is understood that as O,
DON as the supply is guaranteed all of D,
hese ENGINES will use oil instead of a
oal. When all of the coal burners h,
hall have been transformed into oil al
'urners there will be used on the two
ailroads alone between the points II
Iamed $4,000 barrels daily or 6,57O,O0O rf
'arrels per year. ii
AS in the year 1899 there were but II
wo and one-half million barrels OF oil fc
Iroduced in California, the two rail- d.
Dad companies alone would use more 81
han twice the amount of oil ever pro-
uced heretofore in this State in any
ne year.
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