38 



continue to increase at the same rate as during 1902-16, the reserves 

 would be exhausted about 1932. Obviously, these reserves will 

 not be exhausted, because increased prices, growing imports and 

 other causes will prolong the life of the wells. 



Gilbert and Pogue state* that from 90 to 30 per cent of the oil 

 is left underground and that, deducting losses by fire, seepage and 

 evaporation, probably less than 25 per cent of the petroleum under- 

 ground reaches the pipe-line. If we subtract from this proportion 

 the losses involved in improper and wasteful methods of utilization, 

 the recovery factor becomes perhaps as low as 10 per cent. 



Of the world's output of petroleum, 66,000,000 tons, the United 

 States contributes 66 per cent, Russia about 13 per cent, Mexico 

 about 11 per cent and the entire British Empire less than 3 per 

 cent (2-7). 



The production of Canada is 25,100 tons, or -04 of 1 per cent, 

 of the world's production of this raw material which is indispensable 

 to the processes of modern manufacture and transportation. 



"To-day it enters into our daily life under the guise of at least 

 250 different and marketable commodities. It lights our lamps and 

 stoves; it cleans our clothes; it prepares our varnishes; it acts as a 

 substitute for turpentine in the printing, dyeing and painting indus- 

 tries; it invades our tables in the form of artificial butters, confec- 

 tionery and a number of other edibles; it supplies us with our wax, 

 our candles, our vaseline, our chewing gum, and a vast array of 

 ointments, salves and drugs; it furnishes the dressing-table with 

 perfumes and the smoking-room with matches; it imparts the final 

 lustre to collars and shirts, and the textile trades use enormous 

 quantities of it for finishing soft goods; it medicates our bodies and 

 gives to preserved fruits their peculiarly toothsome appearance; 

 it blends with animal and vegetable oils in a range of combinations 

 almost infinite; its residue can be burned as coke or used in the manu- 

 facture of electric arc-lights or employed in road-making as a rival 

 to asphalt; it lubricates our machinery and drives our motor-cars, 

 our ships, our aeroplanes, our locomotives, our ploughs and tractors. 

 By means of it every form of transportation on land, in the air, on the 

 sea and below the sea, has been immeasurably extended and in many 

 instances revolutionized. There must be at least a hundred trades 

 that now use oil for heat and power purposes where ten or fifteen 

 years ago they used nothing but coal."t 



At the London Oil Congress in 1912, it was shown that the 

 Mauretania, for the round trip from Liverpool to New York, by 

 changing from coal to oil would save 5,000 tons of fuel, reduce the 

 stokehold force from 300 to 30 and would make available for cargo 



*Petroletim — A Resource Interpretation, Bulletin 102, Part 6, p. 41, Smithsonian 

 Institution, 1918. 

 Ubid, p. 41. 



