190 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph from D. A. McDannald, Orange, Calif. 



the; wonder-workers 



Drillers whose skill taps the oil-sands half a mile or more beneath the surface. 



chinery multiplies man-power, lubricat- 

 ing- oil is a good and faithful servant that 

 deserves more than a passing thought. 



With all these demands for fuel and 

 lubricants, who can venture an estimate 

 of our needs even ten years hence? 

 Whence will the petroleum come to meet 

 these needs? That river of oil repre- 

 senting our 1 91 8 consumption drew from 

 the ground more than one-twentieth of 

 the quantity estimated by the United 

 States Geological Survey geologists as 

 the content of our unrecovered under- 

 ground reserve, and it also took nearly 

 one-fifth of the oil stored above ground. 



The estimate of about 6y 2 billion bar- 

 rels as now available is far less impressive 

 when we renlize how fast we are using 

 it up and that while we have burned 

 and wasted less than 1 per cent of the 

 coal resources of the United States in 



the last 100 years we have apparently 

 used up 40 per cent of our available oil 

 supply in only 60 years. 



This is why the hunt for oil has become 

 world-wide and suggests a compelling 

 reason for Americans to lead in that 

 hunt. 



A HUNTER WHOSE WEAPON IS THE DRIEE 



The geologist has lately come into his 

 own as a money-saver in the employ of 

 oil companies. Today not less than 750 

 geologists are in the employ of corpora- 

 tions, large and small, selecting the most 

 promising fields for oil exploration and 

 sites for new oil wells. Where it costs 

 from $8 to $20 a foot to drill a well and 

 the oil sands are 3.000 to a,Koo feet be- 

 neath the surface, as in California; or 

 450 to 3.600 feet, as in Oklahoma; or 

 possibly as much as 3,600 feet, as in the 



