THE OIL FIELDS OF TO-MORROW has recently become a national habit to ques tion the future of important natural resources. The probable duration of the forests, of the coal supply, of iron ore and the like have been the sub ject of much speculation. For some unaccountable reason, however, the future of petroleum has been ignored, as though it matters little one way or another. Yet, with all truthfulness, petroleum can be said to stand second to no other mineral product. The continuation of the supply of petroleum is fully as important as the continuation of the coal supply. The loss of a good, cheap means of se curing artificial light would set the world back a hundred years. Millions on millions of people, whether they know it or not, are vitally concerned in the question of the oil fields of to-morrow. The actual comfort and happiness of these millions hinges on the answer to the question, "How long will the supply last? Is it inexhaustible or is the end not far distant?" Fifty years ago the annual output of petroleum for the entire world was certainly much less than 1,000,000 barrels. Twenty-five years ago it was not far from 30,000,000 barrels. Ten years ago it was approximately 125,000,000 barrels; in 1907 it was over 260,000,000 barrels and as yet shows no signs of having reached its limit. Petroleum products have been put to such a variety of uses that there is apparently no limit to possible con sumption. With the greatly increased use for fuel, the continued success of the gasoline engine, the greater and greater extension of the sale of kero sene to the rural population of the world, to say nothing of the steadily growing favor of other products, all sure to be as marked in the future as in the past, there is little reason to look for any great change in the rate of consumption; certainly no decrease is likely.
A continuation of the past rate of increase dur ing the next fifty years would mean a petroleum industry as much greater than the present, as the enormous operations of to-day are greater than those of Kier's time. If the world output should
continue to double each decade in the future, as it has in the past, fifty years hence would see the annual production approaching 10,000,000,000 bar rels, or more than four times the entire yield from the United States in the half century since the industry began. It would require nearly 200,000 wells, each giving 100 barrels a day for every day in the year, or an average daily production some twenty-five times greater than that of the wells in this country at the present time. No imagination can picture the apparatus and organization which would be required to produce and handle such an incredible quantity of oil.
There are few however, for believing that such an enormous growth of production in the future can be possible. The origin of petroleum and the nature of its occurrence, the character of the industry, the whole history of the oil regions and of individual wells, all point clearly to one inevitable conclusion. This conclusion, in brief, is that the supply of petroleum is strictly limited ; that once this supply is gone, no more is to be had, and that the time is not far distant when the limit of maximum production will have been reached.
Many people still believe that the process by which petroleum is formed is a continuous one, or, in other words, that the underground reservoir is constantly being replenished as oil is withdrawn from the well. According to this idea, exhaustion of the supply is a thing of the dim and hazy future. The accepted theory of origin and the known con ditions of occurrence, however, very thoroughly shatter this notion. Petroleum is admittedly the product of decomposing organic matter imprisoned in the strata at the time of their formation. It follows inevitably, therefore, that the amount of petroleum which can be formed is absolutely lim ited by the quantity of fossil remains to undergo decomposition. Hence, when the process of decom position is once completed, it is through for all time as far as that particular stratum of rock is concerned.