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



percentage the future yield of the country over the estimates made 

 under current practice.^ 



It would seem, then, that the wastes in connection with oil pro- 

 duction, which are exceedingly heavy, are more due to inadequate 

 utilization of technical knowledge than to lack of means for effecting 

 the economy. To gain a greater return from the resource, then, is 

 more a matter of shaping a proper economic situation in respect to 

 its exploitation than it is a matter of technological research. 



Greater extraction of values. — We have seen that the oil in sight 

 in the United States can not be reasonably expected to undergo 

 significant enlargement through new discoveries of oil-bearing terri- 

 tory. The main hope of prolonging the life of the resource, there- 

 fore, lies in the two-fold direction of applying improved production 

 technique, as already noted, which will, let us say, double the resource, 

 and of gaining a fuller measure of value from the oil extracted, 

 which is capable of multiplying the resource again by another factor 

 no less great. Improvements in value extraction from the petroleum 

 output will come through the extension and further improvement 

 of " craclring " methods of distillation ; through improvements in the 

 design and efficiency of the internal-combustion engine; through the 

 widening use of the Diesel type of engine, thus gradually deflecting 

 fuel oil from its illegitimate role of a st6am-raising understudy to 

 coal; and through a carefully planned program for building up a 

 great oil by-products industry to give multiplications of value to the 

 portion of oil left after the energy, light, and lubricating values are 

 extracted. 



The " cracking " method of petroleum distillation has already been 

 adverted to as representing the most promising means in sight 

 whereby the growing demand for gasoline can be met from a slow- 

 ing production of crude petroleum. The principle, therefore, is of 

 the utmost importance, since it can be made to shove into the future 

 the most threatening limitation to the growth of the automotive 

 activity. Many " cracking " processes have been developed, all giving 

 the same result, namely, a larger yield of gasoline at the expense of 

 heavier components; but two of them stand out with especial 

 prominence. These are the Burton process, for many years in suc- 

 cessful practice in the refineries of the Standard group ; and the 

 Eittman process, recently developed bj the Bureau of Mines and 

 now also established on a commercial basis.^ There is no need here 

 to go into the technical differences between these processes ; the prin- 



1 For example, the petroleum reserve is 7,000,000,000 barrels, with a valuation on 

 the basis of 1915 prices of $4,500,000,000. For each 1 per cent gain In extraction 

 there will accrue to the reserve 70,000,000 barrels, worth $45,000,000. Expressed in 

 another way, a 60 per cent gain in extraction efficiency will yield the equivalent of the 

 total oil production to date in this country. 



* See Rittman, Dutton, and Dean, Manufacture of gasoline and benzine-toluene from 

 petroleum and other hydrocarbons: Bulletin 114, Bureau of Mines, 1916. See also 

 Yearbook of the Bureau of Mines, 1916, Waslilngton, 1917, pp. 131-133. 



