-RAPID EXHAUSTION.
While the politicians were being stimulated to take defensive measures, the departments at Washington set to work to define the position exactly. On 2nd May the Geological Survey published the following note, which, in its statistical aspect, might well be described as a distress signal : ` The latest statistics collected by the Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior show that foreign coun tries consume half as much petroleum as the United States, while their soil contains seven times as much.
Those countries consume at present zoo million barrels eyear ; at this rate, they have sufficient reserves for 250 years. The contrast with the production of the United States is striking. The latter, with a consumption of 400 million barrels a year, have an assured supply for only eighteen years. In other words, the United States are using up their reserves sixteen times as quickly as the rest of the world.
" If what may be obtained by the distillation of shale or otherwise is neglected, the total quantity of petroleum which may be extracted from the soil in the entire world is estimated to be 6o,000 million barrels. Of this, 43,000 million barrels may be considered more or less definitely proved by successful drillings. The balance represents the petroleum which it is thought may be found in other regions where seepages, deposits of asphalt or favourable geological conditions have been determined, although no economically productive oil wells have been sunk.
" Out of this enormous total, which represents nearly thirteen times the amount of oil extracted from American soil up to the present, and about nine times the world's production up to the present, only 7,000 million barrels in round figures exist in the United States and Alaska, and the remaining 53,00o million are in foreign countries.
" The latter amount is shared in roughly equal quantities by the Old and New World, the Americans disposing of a quantity which very nearly approaches that of the other continents. However, as in the case of coal, the exploita tion of petroleum will be developed much more quickly to the north of the Equator than to the south.
" Fortunately, it is quite impossible to prospect and extract the 7,000 million barrels still buried in American soil in so short a period as eighteen years. Instead of exploiting our reserves so rapidly, we ought either to draw more and more oil from foreign countries or to reduce our consumption. Our children will probably do both." It will be readily understood that such calculations— however hypothetical they may be—could not fail to make a strong impression upon opinion. In the United States, where every workman means to go to the factory in his Ford car, where farmers are obliged to buy lorries and tractors owing to the labour shortage, neither the public nor the makers of engines, ships and aeroplanes wish to restrict their purchases or their production. The conclu sion which became obvious to all was to acquire concessions abroad.