54 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



United States Geological Survey and the accompanying table shows 

 in simplified form the balance sheet as it stands at present : 



Petroleum reserve of the United States, calculated '^ to a per capita basis. 





Per capita rate of 

 production (1917). 



Mined to date, 

 185&-1917. 



Now underground 

 (1918) and avail- 

 able under present 

 methods of mining. 





3.4 barrels 



42 barrels 



70 barrels. 











oThe flsures are given in round number.s based on a oopulation of 100,000,000 and are calculated from 

 data presented bv tne Secretary of the Interior in Senate Oocument No. 310, 64th Congress, 1st session, 

 Feb. 3, 1916, p. 17, which take into account "the productive possibilities, not only of pools already 

 demonstrated to contain oil, but also of those untested areas in which the geologic e\Idence is promising." 



It is evident from the foregoing table, based on the accumulated 

 knowledge of hundreds of workers in petroleum geology, that an im- 

 posing proportion of the petroleum supply is used up. But this table 



500,000,000 



400,000,000 



J00,000,00 



Z00,000,000 



100,000,000 







'f 1 

 / • 







/a • 





J 





\ . . . ._'-...-'--. — .,__.....'-.,-.-, 



i 



UNUSED 1 



^^H USED H 



• 









Fig. 7. — Chart showing the present tendency of the United States in eespect to 

 its tjnmined eeserve of peteoleum. data from u. s. geological survet. 



does not tell the whole story; the consumption of petroleum, to say 

 nothing of population increase, is growing from year to year at a 

 strong rate, so that a continuation of the present tendency would 

 exhaust the petroleum remaining in an alarmingly short period of 

 time. 



This aspect of the situation is depicted graphically in figure 7. 

 With no pretense to prophecy, the diagram expresses the situation 

 that faces the country to-day, and the most generous allowance of 

 margin to cover possible underestimates of future discoveries does 



