Montana oil and mining journal. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1931-1953, 1938-03-05
OUR CLEARING HOUSE
FOR CONFLICTING VIEWS

to buy all the oil / can get in UNDER
ground storage" Continuing, he said: II
don't care about quick development.
want to buy SURE oil land If such a
thing is possible, and l ann willing to
wait. Oil is the one thing that is going
to increase in value''
The man who sent i'm the clippings re-
garding the proposed tax on fuel oil
said: isn't this likely to put the oil i'm
dustry into the dOledrums? Will this not
either put the price of fuel oil so high
that none will use it else the lowered
price will undermine the profit of the re-
finer SO that our oil will be left in the
ground indefinitely"
Those two men are thinkers. Likewise
the man who sent in the Christian
Science Monitor clipping in which the
writer said: 1.-The fact is that, ever since
the dark prophecies were first uttered,
new sources have constantly been tapped
d.. For there is tremendous area still
remaining unexplOred-an area about 20
times the size of the United Kingdom
That much of this area would be OiI-bear-
ing is the verdict of biologists. They
describe the area as of geological for
nation which nHsy contain oil. Oil men
themselves speak about the possibilities
without any such qualification"
The member who read the article was
not inclined to accept the 'Oil famine"
theory proposed by COyle. Rather, he
read something else between tho lines.
He wrote:
growing propaganda regarding the
coming oil famine has been apparent
to me for some time past and / have
been waiting TO see the answer. The am
swer comes with the introduction in con-
gress of the bill to put a One-cent-per-
gallon tax fuel OIL That is the work
Of the powerful coal barOns The fuel oil
industry has grown into such Importance
in this state that / can fOrsee the day
when the gasoline content will no longer
be the important part of the crude OIL
am not old man but / can remem-
Der when KEROSENE was the part of
crude that determined the price Gasoline
and fuel oil were drug on the mar
ket. Then came the use of gasoline, and
kerosene faded from the picture. None
ever refers to the worth of crude in
terms of the value of the kerosene.
Whereas they used to pour the gasoline
into our kerosene in order to get rid
OF thd former, now they pour kerO-
sene into our gasoline to get
tent determines the value of crude OIL
About half of the barrel of crude is
fuel oil. So they started developing a
market for the fuel oil As a re ult,
thousands and perhaps hundreds of thOus-
ands of oil burners have been in tailed
not only i'm factories but i'm private
homes. People who have burned fuel oil
in their homes would never go back to
coal if they could afford to buy fuel
OIL But that is the catch. The coal
barOns have an idea that they can force
people to go back to burning coal by
adding AZ cents per barrel to the co
of fuel oil. To accomplish this end it
is necessary to prove to the public that
they can't depend on the supply OF fuel
oil; that in just few years there will
be no fuel oil available at any price;
and therefore that people should burn
coal and save the Oil--keep it in the
ground, for the use of future genera
tons"