WHERE THE WORLD GETS ITS OIL 



187 



From "World Atlas of Commercial Geology," U. S. Geological Survey 

 MAP SHOWING PRODUCTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES IN I918, AND 

 THE OUTLINES OE THE PETROLEUM AREAS 



Each black dot represents one per cent of the total production of petroleum in the United 

 States. The dotted lines surround oil-producing areas. Where the production is less than 

 one per cent, the area is indicated by the cross. 



nounced that there will soon be 1,731 

 oil-burning vessels of the merchant ma- 

 rine under the American flag ; gasoline is 

 now sold at every cross-roads, and we 

 know that the use of this fuel in auto- 

 motive engines has more than quadrupled 

 during the present decade ; and the coun- 

 try's demand for lubricating oil, which 

 is an essential in every phase of modern 

 civilization, increases so rapidly that we 

 must agree with the Bureau of Mines in 

 the belief that the current consumption 

 of lubricants is an excellent barometer 

 of business and industrial conditions. 



SIX MILLION PLEASURE CARS IN THE 

 UNITED STATES 



Inventive genius and economic neces- 

 sity may from time to time change the 

 relative demands for this or that petro- 

 leum derivative, but the sum total of 

 these demands must increase as the num- 

 ber of swiftly turning wheels in the 

 world increases. 



It is when we think of the marvelous 

 growth of the automotive industry that 



we realize a future demand for lubri- 

 cation that staggers even the prophetic 

 statistician. With more than six million 

 pleasure automobiles operated in the 

 United States alone, we have an annual 

 consumption estimated, by the officials of 

 the foremost company manufacturing 

 high-grade lubricants, at 120 million gal- 

 lons of lubricating oil, where twenty 

 years ago the demand for this purpose 

 was practically nothing. 



Moreover, today a fleet of half a mil- 

 lion motor trucks travel up and down 

 our city streets and State roads, deliver- 

 ing every kind of commodity from eggs 

 to pianos, and these powerful motors 

 furnish a market for 373^ million gal- 

 lons of lubricating oil. But while we 

 may expect the demand for oil by auto- 

 mobiles to continue to increase rapidly 

 and the requirement by trucks may possi- 

 bly double within a few years — indeed, a 

 tire company estimates that even now a 

 million trucks are in service — who can 

 even guess at the number of tractors that 

 may be operating on our farms within 



