OUR PETROLEUM RESOURCES? 
By WALLACE HB. PRATT 
Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) 
As “a nation on wheels” we came long ago to rank petroleum, the 
source of lubricants and liquid fuels, close to the top of our list of 
essential commodities. Recently, as a nation at war utilizing petro- 
leum as raw material for indispensable plastics and synthetics, includ- 
ing rubber, and even for the TNT of our bombs and high-explosive 
shells, we have accorded it a still more important place in our national 
economy. Barring the conquest of some new, revolutionary form of 
energy, petroleum must continue to be one of America’s paramount 
necessities. 
What, then, of petroleum for the future? We all realize that the 
petroleum resources of the earth are a waning asset; so far as the needs 
of mankind are concerned there is no renewal of supply. How large 
are the reserves available to us and where are they situated ? 
The following quotation is typical of recent press comment on the 
subject of our petroleum reserves in the United States: “This nation’s 
proved reserves of petroleum now bulk some twenty billion barrels, a 
quantity equal to our present peace-time requirements for a period of 
about 15 years. Over the last three years our discoveries of new re- 
serves have consistently failed to balance our annual consumption.” 
These oversimplified figures, though entirely accurate, lend themselves 
readily to misinterpretation. Many people conclude from them that 
15 years hence we will have no gasoline for our automobiles. They 
even fear critical shortages of petroleum products for present war 
needs. The misunderstanding might in some degree be dispelled if 
the facts were more fully revealed. 
The statement quoted leads to the assumption that our 20 billion 
barrels of proved reserves in the United States constitute our total 
remaining resources in petroleum. Yet in fact our total resources far 
exceed our proved reserves. In the first place much petroleum remains 
to be discovered in the United States. Less than half the total area 
promising for petroleum has been thoroughly explored. In much of 
1 Reprinted by permission from the American Scientist, vol. 32, No. 2, April 1944. 
297 
