16 CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 



So conservative an authority as the Geological Survey estimates 

 that the oil shales of the Western States alone contain many times 

 over the quantity of oil that will be recovered from our oil wells. 

 The retorting of oil from oil shale has been a commercial industry 

 for many years in Scotland and France; in fact, oil was obtained 

 from oil shale here in the United States before the first oil well was 

 drilled. The industry is in process of redevelopment to-day and if 

 successful will assure us of a future supply, but at the best it will 

 take years of time and a vast investment of capital to build up the 

 industry to such a point that it can supply any considerable propor- 

 tion of our needs. It is imperative, however, that the development 

 of this latent resource be furthered and brought to a state of com- 

 mercial development as soon as possible. 



SAVE OIL. 



Yet with all the optimism that can be justified I would urge a 

 policy of saving as to petroleum that should be rigid in the extreme. 

 If we are to long enjoy the benefits of a petroleum age, which we 

 must frankly admit fits into the comfort-loving and the speed-loving 

 side of the American nature, we must save this oil. 



We must save it before it leaves the well ; keep it from being lost ; 

 keep it from being flooded out, driven away by water. Through 

 the cementing of wells in the Gushing field, Oklahoma, the daily vol- 

 ume of water lifted from the wells was decreased from 7,520 barrels 

 to 628 barrels, while the daily volume of oil produced was increased 

 from 412 barrels to 4,716. These instances show what can and 

 should be done in our known oil fields. 



We must save the oil after it leaves the well, save it from drain- 

 ing off and sinking into the soil, save it from leaking away at pipe 

 joinings, save it. from the wastes of imperfect storage. 



Then we come to the refining of the oil. How welcome now would 

 be the knowledge that we could recover what was thrown away 

 when kerosene was petroleum's one great fraction. (The loss in 

 refineries is still startling, some 14,556,000 barrels last year 4J per 

 cent of the crude run in the refineries.) 



The self-interest of the American refiner, notably the Standard Oil 

 Co., has done a work that probably no mere scientific or noncommer- 

 cial impulse could have equaled, in torturing out of petroleum the 

 secrets of its inmost nature. And yet the thought will not altogether 

 give place that in that residue which goes to the making of roads or 

 to be burned in some crude way there may be things chemical that 

 will work largely for man's betterment. This is the fact, too that 

 where the oil is produced by some small companies which have not the 

 financial ability to make it yield its full riches there is a greater 

 danger of loss of this kind. It would be well indeed if there could be 



