Arizona republican., 1920-11-05
GAS ABOUT GAS
BY Frederic J Haakin

 failing supply of petroleum. And 1t is a subject that comes home to everyone who rides in ain automobile in the [ form of a high price for gas, and of frequent alarms cs to the complete | failure. of the supply.
 These alarms are generally offset | by equally stirring tales of enormous supplies of oil untapped, or of the dis cOyery of substitutes which will soon | make us as independent of petroleum | as petroleum made us independent of | whales for an oil supply. The humble | owner of a flivver does not know | whether to believe that he may be robbed of his transportation any day | by the failure of his fuel supply, or that the supply is inexhaustible, or that he will have to change his car buretor presently and use a fuel made l out of alfalfa, shavings and waste 1 paper. Likewise he is sometimes | tempted to believe that he will have to go to war and fight for a supply of gas with other nations and at other times he is encouraged to think that the United States will be as indepen- dent in this respect for all time as the irreconcilables would have 1t be in political questions.
 The oil supply question. like every other vital question in America, has been converted into a frightful buzz aboo which is used to scare us by all sorts of interested and mischievous persons, as boys use a hollow pumpkin and sheet on Halloween. People that want to invade Mexico and people who oppose intervention, people that want to stir up feeling against Eng land, and people that want us to love her, people that want a high price for 4 1~ all use this question as a means to an end, and all os them can find fig ures to support their several conten- tions.
 f This Is the Truth
 Yet the facts about the oil supply are comparatively simple, according to the bureau of mines.
 The consumption of gasoline in this country increases at an alarming rate That is the first important fact It looks as though we would always use all the gas we can get. Barring some improbable great find of oil in this country, we will always live in fear of shortage and We will casionaIIy suffer from a temporary shortage at least. We are dependent upon con- stant new discoveries for keeping up our supply. From % to 35 per cent of the oil NC use in any year comes from new wells. We are to some ex- tent like the tramp who never knows where the next meal is coming from, 1 but who nearly always finds it some where. Each year there is a little oil boom or a big one somewhere in the l United States, and that oil boom saves the situation. If year or two should pass without the opening of new wells of substantial value, there would be a shortage which would probably con- tinue until new finds were made.
 In other words, while the end of our known oil supply is just a little way ahead, our unknown oil supply keeps
 coming to the rescue. But it is not a thing to rely upon.
 Then, too, our known oil supply is
 being stretched in ways that were not
 dreamed of a few years ago. Wells in
 old fields, such as that at Bradford
 Pa, which were supposed to be about ! exhausted, are being made to yield by
 ingenious methods. Water flooding
 and the forcing of a flow of oil by means of compressed air, are the best \ of these methods. As a result Of whst
 they have shown, some experts believe
 that we have not been recovering
 more than 20 per cent of the oil from
 our wells. and they believe that oul
 estimate Of oil. supply in this country
 must be increased at least 50 per cent
 and perhaps 100 per cent.
 Three Sources of Supply
 Our supply of motor fuel may bt
 supplemented chiefly in three ways
 Tn the first place, motor fuel may be
 obtained from coal by coking it and
 also from natural gas. Neither ot
 these sources offers a solution of the problem, of course, because the coa
 and gas supplies are inadequate. Blu 7 they will help. Especially importan is the growth of the tendency to colS' all coal before it is used as furnace fuel
 In the second place. we have vas deposits of shales containing petroleum which science has found ways of ex tracing. The supply of oil in the oi 3 shales is vastly greater than that fl the known fields of free oil. These oi shales have repeatedly been held IT as a complete solution Of the problem As matter of fact, they are no i'm mediate solution at all. The extrac q tion of oil from the sbales is hardly ol a a. commercial basis yet, and the mer S digging Of the shales would take al 4 most as many men as 1t takes to di < our coal supply. It is reasonable t ' hope that the oil shales will ultinnatel z supply large part of our needs fo s i petroleum. and 1t is comforting | < know that this great potential suppl s is at hand in our own country; but i g must be borne in mind that We hay q not yet learned how to get at thi S 1 treasure.
 N The use of alcohol as a motor fue a and even as a source of all power, ha S also been the subject of much Tnis A representation. Alcohol can be mad 2 from most vegetable matter, and veg s etable matter renews itself indefinitel1 q Therefore here is theoretically an in a exhaustible source of motor fuel. Bu # here again the whole technique ( N producing the fuel remains to be dis z covered. Alcohol is now worth thre s times as much as gasoline. From tn 2 leaves of forest trees enough alcoht \ could be made to run all the automo A piles in the country, but the cost ( 4 gathering the leave is prohibitiv S Enough vegetable matter goes \ waste on farms and in sawmills [ make an alcohol supply adequate fc # our motor fuel needs but here egai A the cost of gathering this widely scat sN tered material and making it into al # cohol is prohibitive.
 V industry Laes
 s The inertia of our industrial syS I tenn must be taken into account her S Government bureaus are doing a Iii E tie experimental work on both c M sales and alcohol production. but nc M muck. 5f scientific commissions {