The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-02-14
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL p
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HASKIN, Director.
Washington, d. c.
THE OIL CRISIS.

THE OIL CRISIS.
Washington, D. C, Feb. 10.-When
the Standard Oil company recently
put up the price of gasoline l cent a
gallon the increase produced the Gus
tomary reflex thru the American re-
tail machinery, and the consumer was
required to pay 2 and 3 cents more
for it. The five million operators of
motor cars in the United States had
been paying, in typical communities,
rs cents a gallon for gasoline. Now
they are paying 81 and % cents.
The public is accustomed to having
prices raised on commodities SO that
it hardly gave this incident thought
1t was, however, a, flash from the
great drama of oil that is today playing
itself out in the world, a drama that
has few parallels in the history of
commodities, and beside which the
world scramble for gold in the past
generation was a mere curtain raiser.
The price of gasoline went up be-
cause the price of crude oil, from
which it is refined, had advanced.
Gasoline is the cream of. crude oil. the
10 or 15 per cent that is skinned off
the top of that product. 1t is the most
refined of all fuels. The propellant
that hauls the articles of trade and
industry, that sends the fighting plano
aloft, or drives my lady's Limousine
when she goes calling. 1t is the
OIL Inc 1AOuSlly
with all its dependents. 1t is a child
of yesterday, today so firmly estab-
lished in the industrial household as
to seem indispensable
There is a crisis in gasoline that
has thoroly alarmed those who know
the problem best, but which seems to
be little appreciated by the multitude
of it's users turnout the land. Crude
oil has gone up in price because of the
increased world demand for it. The
navies of the world have found that
oil is a fuel that is far more satisfac-
tory than the coal they have been
burning. 1t can be stored as ballast,
and the great spaces occupied by coal
can be used for other purposes. 1t
can be fed under the boilers by the
turning of a faucet, and the stokers
may be brought from the furnace
rooms and given tasks le- like that
of laboring in the intern, The fuel
cargo of oil that may be c rried by
ship can drive it on a far longer
journey than any cargo of coal will
take it.
So the navies of the world have
turned to oil. Likewise the cargo and
passenger ships of recent build have
largely substituted oil tanks for bunk
ers The American Shipping board
has shown marked Partially for oil
burners. There are many railroads
that have substituted oil for coal, and
even stationary engines burn it. In
displacement of coal if the supply can
be found to keep pace with the de-
mand.
The use of oil has grown so stu
pendous that it is difficult to believe
that it was but sixty years ago that 4
man named Drake, while sinking a
well in Pennsylvania, in search of
brine, accidentally brought in the first
oil well. It is difficult to realize that
forty years ago the Unified States pro-
dueed but a hundred thousand barrels
of OH a day, and had great difficulty
in marketing it, while today the yield
is ten times as great and there is a
ready market for twice that yield
were it available.
And now that the era of oil has
esta blished itself there is alarm in
high circles lest the whole structure
fall because of lack of the product
The scientists in the department Of the
interior who devote themselves to
study of oil. state that the United
States, having produced Sc per cent
of all the oil that the world has SO far
burned, has reached its maximum of
production, is about ready to start on
the down grade, and that, in twenty
or thirty years, there will be no oil
at all left in this broad domain. This
statement alone should be sufficient
to send the cold chills up and down
the spines of those investors who are
dependent upon oil for the continu-
ance of their industries. The call of
the government scientists is for an
awakening for an up-and-at-'sln pol
icy in finding new sources of supply.
and of reaching economy thru more
effective use of the oil already in
existence
The United States has been the
nf oil and 1ilypWiSa
the greatest consumer. Until recently
it has contributed great quantities to
other nations. Now it has reached the
point, however, where it uses more
oil than it produces. For the last year
or two it has cut deeply into the re-
serve supplies that have been held in
tanks from Baltimore to Bakersfield
Last year Slarge quantities of oil were
imported from Mexico, but there is a
slump in Mexican production because
of governmental interference in new
work, and an exhaustion of some OF
those great wells that literally flowed
rivers of oil.
Next year there will be need of more
extensive importations, and still more
the next and the next. The demand
for oil was never so insistcnt. Yet the
American situation is not to be COM
pared with that OF Europe, where
LHeTe Is III absolute Oh 1dlIiiAlCf anu
where fabulous prices are offered for
it. Gasoline in France, for instance.
is controlled by the government. and
the price is not allowed to rise in pro-
portion to demand. Yet gasoline sells
for a dollar gallon in France.
So the question arises as to where
the supply of oil, and particularly
gasoline, is to come from. VIII auto
mobile owners be able to ope1 ate year
after next? The answer is, obviously,
that more oil must be found. or the
age of oil will enter into decline. At
present there is an eager and en-
thusiastic hunt for the discovery of
new sources of supply. The biologists
hold that the United States is pretty
well prospected. yet thousands of men
are searching for new Ell Dorados of
oil. There is always the lure that any
man who sinks a well may strike the
greatest field of them all
While the United States is inten-