Billions Of Barrels Of Oil

The United States produced from their oil wells an average of about 4,400,000 barrels every single day after entry into World War II, but the new fields discovered, as well as extensions of old fields, enabled experts to keep the proven reserves figure around 20 billion barrels. The United States has something in excess of 39 percent of the world's proven reserves. The known reserves of other countries are estimated at 31 billion barrels, most of this lying in the Near/Mid-East, the Caribbean area, South America, the land of Soviet Russia (in and near the Ural Mountains), interior Europe, and the Far East. There was recently discovered a promising field in China, and pools are also known to exist in Alaska and in Canada. There are some petroleum reserves in Mexico.

Since the people of the United States are the most prodigious consumers of petroleum and its products, it is most obvious that we must turn more and more to the fields of other continents for our supply. We are now drawing from the Caribbean fields. Not so many years will pass before we may also have to draw upon the virtually undeveloped fields of the Middle East, where only a few wells have disclosed reserves that may prove to be even greater than our own. Until World War II the petroleum industry had been highly competitive and individualistic.

There was little thought of cooperation. Oilmen were accustomed to serve as many customers as they could get. Then the moment arrived in 1941 when it appeared that individual enterprise might fall short of such an emergency goal as supplying the armed forces as well as the customers at home with vital petroleum products. So the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt directed that there be organised what was to become the Petroleum Administration for War. The agency, born of emergency, was charged with the responsibility of coordinating the gigantic facilities of the petroleum industry so that all essential requirements could be met.

Experts were drafted from the industry itself, and one of their first, duties was to alleviate the shortage of petroleum products along the eastern seaboard. Mile-long express-trains of tank cars moved east from Texas, and construction of pipelines was launched. By the first of 1945 there were more than 140,000 miles of pipelines within the United States. It required a constant "fill" of 35 million barrels of oil and products to keep these lines in operation. This total figure sometimes confused the public because it showed up as "stock on hand." While this technically was true, it was not stock that could be called upon for emergency use, because, without the 35 million barrel fill, the pipelines could not function.

By: davidbunch

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