GAS AND OIL 



to roll off the assembly lines. Still more of the extra- 

 premium fuel would be needed if they were to take to 

 the air against the enemy, and the Allied strategists had 

 agreed that air supremacy was the key to victory over 

 the Axis. 



More than all this, our synthetic rubber program was 

 at a highly critical point. Half of our desperately 

 needed supplies depended upon butadiene, and this 

 new process held the best hope of importantly increas- 

 ing this necessary rubber ingredient. 



Two weeks later the new Baton Rouge fluid "cat- 

 cracking" plant was turning out half again as many 

 gallons as it was hoped it might. 



Petroleum refining has become a very complicated 

 operation, involved with chemistry and bristling with 

 uncouth technical terms. Therefore we can enjoy the 

 full flavor of this meaty, new development more fully 

 and relish its meaning in future Southern industrial de- 

 velopment, if we fade out from that red-letter day at 

 Baton Rouge to Pittsburgh in 1857. The million-dollar 

 labyrinth of platinum and stainless steel which is the 

 modern refinery becomes a little iron pot with a long 

 copper neck in which a canny Scot, Samuel Kier, first 

 refined crude petroleum. 



Kier's refinery was built on the same principle, and 

 was as simple as a moonshiner's still. He fed five gallons 

 of crude oil into his pot. Heat from the coal fire beneath 



235 



