OUR PETROLEUM RESOURCES—PRATT 299 
our depleted oil fields some 70 billion barrels of petroleum. With 
improved methods of secondary recovery much of this additional re- 
serve is certain to be reduced to possession and utilized over the long 
future. 
In summary, then, the total proved reserves of petroleum in the oil 
fields already discovered by Americans, at home and abroad, are of the 
order of 40 billion barrels. Associated with these reserves of liquid 
petroleum there are proved reserves of natural gas, or gaseous petro- 
leum, equivalent in available energy to an additional 17 billion barrels, 
or more, of petroleum. Thus we have a minimum proved reserve of 
57 billion barrels of petroleum in the hands of the American petroleum 
industry. And after this entire reserve has been exhausted there will 
remain in the ground in all the oil fields in the United States from 
which our past supplies have been withdrawn an additional 70 billion 
barrels or so which we may certainly hope ultimately to reclaim in 
part by improved methods of recovery. 
As to the decline in the rate of discovery of new oil fields in the 
United States, it should be realized that our normal oil-finding effort 
has been a war casualty. The failure to discover a larger number of 
new oil fields is largely due to the fact that finding oil has been sacri- 
ficed to other objectives which we have felt were more important to 
the national welfare in time of war. Crude-oil prices were at low 
levels when we entered the war. Proved reserves had been increasing, 
there was little incentive to risk capital in exploration, a hazardous 
venture at best. In the midst of this depressed situation war broke out 
and denied to the petroleum industry the critical materials, the man- 
power, and the price increases that were essential to stimulate explora- 
tion. Except for these restrictions “wildcatting” by the thousands of 
small independent enterprises that constitute the mainstay of our oil- 
finding industry would have been multiplied and our national discov- 
ery rate would certainly have maintained a higher level. Oil finding 
is an increasingly difficult undertaking in this country at best, but 
during the recent emergency we have simply failed to sustain normal 
exploratory activities. 
A significant fact which may be deduced from the statement we 
have quoted is that our ordinary peacetime consumption of petroleum 
in the United States amounts to 450 gallons per capita annually. 
Compare this figure with the annual consumption for the average 
citizens of the rest of the world, which is 15 gallons; or with 80 
gallons for the average citizen of the United Kingdom, or 50 gallons 
for the average Russian. We use 30 times as much petroleum per 
capita as the rest of the world uses ! 
Petroleum in the modern world is potential energy. With our 
machines it is converted into mechanical work. High standards of 
