22 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



Left — Well No. 5 of the Union Oil Co., where the Petroleum came up in large 

 quantities. Right — 1,000-lb. tank installed in the "Jorge" mine at Bacuranao. — 

 Cuban & Pan-American Petroleum and Refining Co. 



Union Oil Co. for the delivery of its petroleum over the pipe line, at the rate of one cent per 

 gallon. 



The borings made by these four companies on the Santiago, Jorge and Jorge Candido 

 properties are all grouped in an area that does not exceed 20,000 square meters. Nearly all 

 have produced petroleum at a depth of approximately 1,000 ft., most of them in small quantities, 

 but they still can be considered as producing on a commercial basis a product which is salable 

 at a good price. Certain it is that we are very far from producing the enormous quantities 

 of the wells of the United States, or even those of Mexico, but the results obtained in 

 Bacuranao are very encouraging, especially as the explorations so far have been confined to 

 moderate depths, and we have greater depths still waiting, which up to the present is a field 

 unexplored. 



PETROLEUM FIELDS. — Many theories which we need not recall here have been ad- 

 vanced in regard to the origin of petroleum. From the geologist's viewpoint, petroleum is found 

 in many different geological formations. In Pennsylvania it is found in the Devonic and Car- 

 boniferous; in Canada in the Silurian; in the State of Colorado, in the Cretaceous; in Virginia, 

 in bituminous coal lands; in South Carolina in the Triassic; in Venezuela in the mica rocks; in 

 the Caucasus, in cretaceous rocks. 



No fixed rule, therefore, can be alleged in regard to geological formations. In Cuba petro- 

 leum has been found in small quantities in strata belonging to the cretaceous period, corres- 

 ponding to the secondary age. 



A remarkable fact, observed by all geologists who have visited the Island, is that petroleum 

 is always associated here with igneous rocks. So far all the oil has been found in the serpentmes 

 or in the contact of serpentine with sedimentary rocks. Wells drilled in sedimentary strata 

 far from intrusions of serpentine have not yielded results which would throw any light on its 

 existence in sedimentary strata of anticlinal structure. 



