El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-04-02

and are the property OF the Burma Oh
company. | can see at least two score
or so from where | am writing. Each
tank will hold million gallons of oil,
and altogether they contain a supply
which could furnish one gallon to every
man. woman and child in the United
States and leave some to spare
Burma's Oil Fleet.
The Burma Oil company has its own
fleet of tank steamers. These have a
capacity of 100000 gallons each, and are
intended for shipping petroleum to
other parts of the world. 1t has also oil
barges of a million gallons each for
bringing the crude petroleum down the
Irawadi from the native oil fields up
country. These are situated about 270
miles in the interior, and pipe lines are
now being laid from them to SYRIAN.
The pipes are already as far as Ran
coon, and within a few months they Will
be running into the refineries here. At
first the pipes were laid ON the surface
of the ground, but they were affected
by the changes of temperature, and are
now being buried
An East Indiann Monopoly.
Burma has the third largest oil trust
of the world The Standard comes first,
then Russia. and after that Burma. The
output OF the Burmese company is now
about 150,000,000 gallons per annum
and it sells for something like $1,000
600.
This is only ne-eightieth of the out
put of the Standard, and the value
equals only -thirtieth that OF the
United States product. The oil business
here, however, as far as modern methods
are concerned is only IN its infancy, and
IL l..
90 wears since the first oil wells were
drilled. although the people had been
using Old gathered in other ways for a
generation before. 1t was along back
in 1887 that the American system OF
getting oil was introduced, and now the
fields are spotted with derricks- Amer
leans have been brought in to superin-
tend the sinking of the wells, and 20
such men are now so employed at 50
per day.
In the earlier stages of the drilling
the oil was found at depth of 500 feet,
but recent wells have gone down several
Thousand feet, and many OF those now
producing are one or two thousand feet
deep. There are but few flowing wells
and the average capacity IS far under
that of the United States. We have
MANY wells which yield 100 and more
1Hc CASASO hOiA III C~A
ma yields about IA barrels, and many
less.
Since the beginning of the drilling the
production has steadily increased. In
1890 it was only 100000 gallons. Eight
wears later it was 20,000,000, and in
1902 it rose to 55,O00.000. The follow
ing year the output was 30,000,0OO more,
and I'm 1908 the oil raised Appropriated
15O.00O,0O0 gallons. Oil is/now found
on the islands off the coast of this
country and new fields are being dis
covered in>the hills of the interior. So
far the most of the product comes from
two parallel ravines, the wells being
sunk along the cliffs on both sides and
in the space between The most of the
oil seems to lie below the margins Of
the ravines.
The Worlds First OIL Trast.
1t is strange to find that the first oil
trust of the world was founded in far
away Asia. The petroleum business of
Burma has always been monopoly 1t
was in existence long before our Penn
sylvania oil was discovered, being then
in the hands of "a families who be-
longed to two villages located in the
Yenangyang oil country, from which
most of the petroleum still comes. Gen
erations ago these families bad taken
possession of the oil fields, ard had so