Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-04-03

are the property of the Burma Oil Com
pany. l can see at least two score or so
from where | am writing. Each tank will
hold Il million gallons of OIL and alto
gether they contain a supply which could
furnish one gallon to every man, woman
and child in the United States and leave
some to spare.
The Burma Oil Company has it's own
feet of tank steamers. These have a
capacity of 5C0.OC 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
1rawadi from the native oil fields UP
country. These are situated about 90
miles in the interior. and pipe lines are
now being laid from them to SYRIAN.
The pipes are already as far as Rangoon,
and within few months they will be
first the pipes We're laid on the surface
of the ground. but they were affected
by the changes of temperature, and are
now being buried.
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 1oO,OOO,OOO gallons per annum and
1t sells for something like S3O0O.OO0.
This is only one-eightieth of the out
put OF the standard. and the value equals
only one-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 the
possibilities are enormous. 1t is just
twenty-three years since the first oil
wells were drilled, although the people
had been using oil gathered in other
ways for 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
Americans have been brought in to
superintend the sinking of the wells. and
seventy such men are now so employed
at S. 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
many wells which yield 100 and more bar
rels daily. The average we'll in Burma
yields about fourteen barrels, and many
less.
Since the beginning of the drilling the
production has steadily increased In
1890 1T was only 100000 gallons, Eight
years later it was 2O,OOO,OOO and in 1902
it rose to 55,OOOOOO. The following year
the output was 10000, 600 more and in
1908 the oil raised appropriated 10000
600 gallons. Oil is now found on the
islands off the coast of this country and
new fields are being discovered 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 be-
tween. The most of the oil seems to lie
below the margins of the ravines.
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 a monopoly 1t
was in existence long before our Pennsyl-
vania oil was discovered, being then in
the hands of twenty-four families who
belonged to two villages located in the
Yenangyang oil country. from which
most of the petroleum still comes. Gener-
atoms ago these families had taken pos
session of the oil fields and had so
fixed it that no one outside their own
members could dig for petroleum or own
an oil well. The families were known
as Yoya. and their chiefs were called
Twinsayo. If family had no descend