Evening star., 1947-02-16
Oil Industry
Is Gold Lined
Hundreds of By.Products
Pyramid Income
From Fuel
By George Tucker

NEW YORK.-The oil industry.
spreading faster than a prairie FIRE,
has swept past the filling station
to the nursery, the candy kitchen
and the drug counter.
Back in 1914, at the beginning
of the First World War, it was
basically fuel enterprise.
Now, 3s years later, the industry
is able to count egg gg-packers, dish
washers, cable insulators, road
builders, construction engineers,
candlemakers, chewing gum manu-
facturers, ointment producers, in
sect eXterminators and paint pro-
ducers all in the same fold.
In all, there are more than 500
y-products of oil.
For instance, the asphalt you
walk on comes from oil. The soap
you wash with, the antifreeze you
put IN your car, the wax-container
in which your milk is delivered,
have oil ingredients.
A sourdough swapping wild ami
NAL skins for kerosene at a Klon-
dixie trading post and kid spend.
ing nickel for chewing gum.
sealed in a paraffin wrapper. as
a suburban candy counter are tap
ping the same source.
Melted Nearly a Billion.
The synthetic rubber in your
tires, some of the medicine you
use, even the ink in your pen is
closely associated with Oil.
These hundreds of by-proc4lcts,
made possible when men learned
TO break up crude oil and separate
its elements, have altered Amer
ican living standards to a point
where few men, women or children
remain uninfiuenced by it.
Similarly, the character Of the
Oil industry has changed. Once
a basic fuel proposition, 1t is now
a widening empire of multiple by
products with pyramiding sources
of income. By-products make money
or they wouldn't remain on the
market.
1t is estimated that the industry
as whole will show net earnings
for 1946 of almost a billion dollars.
In the previous year the estimated
earnings were $750,000,0 900.
BY wholesale incorporation of its
products into the national living
standard, many experts feel the
industry has reached what is prac-
tically an invulnerable position
Its basic commodity and many by
products are so interviewer into in
dustry, agriculture and daily living
that where one segment slumps,
others automatically take up the
slack.
AirIines Good Customers.
One oil man put it this way: I'VE
don't mind bad weather. When
can't get out on the road
they stay home and burn more fuel"
Fair weather or foul, American
used 10000 ,ooo, 900 gallons
Of gas last year. Despite boom
prices rose only frac-
,ionally.
On January i, 1946, check Of 50
cities disclosed an average price Of
20.24 cents a gallon. On January
|, 1947, a check of the same cities
showed the price to be 21.73 cents
, gallon.
The airlines bought 100000
barrels of aviation gas in 1916, a
,eace year record. The armed forces
Fought only 1000, 900 barrels of avia-
ion gas but supplemented it with
follower wartime stocks of $4,000, 900
The armed forces also purchased
70, 600 900 barrels of motor gasoline,
1000, 900 barrels OF distillate,
Is, ,0O0, 900 barrels of residual oils,
900 600 barrels of kerosene, 100000
,arrek of lubricants. These pur-
.hases were exclusively within the
United States and do not includs
additional quotas obtained in ths
Middle East or elsewhere
distributed By the scisted ersssS