The Wilmington morning star., 1944-03-23
Oil Probers
BY PETER EDISON

When the new 11-man Senate Committee
gets going on its job of drawing up national
policy on U. S. Oil reserves, the first thing it
will run into is an inability of the experts to
agree on what those reserves really amount
to,
Further, this situation has been tremendous
ly complicated in the last few days by lot
of frantic revision of precious estimates, for
motives and reasons that frankly look funny.
One of the most respected biologists in the
business, e. L. de Golyer of the governments
Petroleum Reserves Corporation. now eSti-
mates known oil reserves in proved U. S.
fields at % billion barrels. With crude oil
pumped out at billion to billion and half
barrels year during the last 10 years. that
would mean this country now has reserves for
from Is to 20 years, which isn't much.
year ago the Petroleum Reserves Com
mittee of the American Petroleum institute
estimated reserves at over 38 billion barrels
"a scant Ayear supply. In spite of this. j..
Edgar Pew of Philadelphias Sun Oil Company,
the committee chairman states that the oil
requirements from U. S. sources "for many
generations. How this deduction is made on
his own figures is a bit puzzling.
Wallace E. Pratt, vice president and geolo-
gist for the Standard Oil Company of New
Jersey, previously estimated U. S. reserves at
100 billion barrels, 40 per cent recoverable
under present production methods. In his re-
cent address before the Oil Heat Institute Of
America, Pratt discounted the 14-year reserve
theory, declaring that after proved reserves
had been exhausted there would still be
some 70 billion barrels left in the ground fol-
secondary recovery.
taproom argument Here is the fundamental
question on which the postwar oil policy OF
the United States will be decided.
| The question itself is simple, but the ramifi
cations reach from here to Hedjaz. A 1A-yea1
U. S. reserve means one kind of oil policy ano
foreign policy An unlimited or 1000year re
serve is something else again.
| Conservationists and conservatives view
with alarm the heavy wartime drains on re
serves. From this crowd comes the demand for
developing u S. oil concessions in the Middle
Fart and for building pipelines across Saudi
Arabia to the eastern shores of the Mediter
ranean.
The Senate committee is going to invest
gate this, also.
You should get these pressure groups
Strengthened out to know what's behind these
statements and those to come:
Producers who have U. S. oil to sell will
want to sell it, now. They will lean to the idea
| that U. S. oil reserves ample and there i:
no need to conserve. Such people will vel
bloody murder at the thought of any foreign
entanglements in oil. and will scream thai
government participation in financing or own
ership of foreign oil fields or pipe lies means
the death of private industry and free enter
prise
On the other hand, oil companies whose U
S. holdings may be near exhaustion and com
panies having extensive foreign holdings viii
be in there lobbying for a strongly nationals
oil policy, conservation of U. S. reserves, ex
ploitation of foreign fields, so per cent OF whlcr
are now owned by U. S. nationals. This Woule
mean considerable government financing or