PETROLEUM: A RESOURCE INTERPRETATION . 1 
By Chester G. Gilbert and Joseph E. Pogue, 
Of the Division of Mineral Technology, United States National Museum. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Petroleum is of peculiar value to society because it is the sole source 
of gasoline, the dominant motor fuel; provides kerosene, the most 
important illuminant outside of cities; and yields lubricating oil, 
upon which the wheels of industry revolve. In addition, it has come 
to be an essential fuel in the Southwest and on the Pacific coast, 
where coal is lacking ; 2 is requisite to the operations of an oil- 
burning navy; and forms the starting point for an oil by-products 
industry, a branch of chemical manufacture still in its infancy and 
offering unlimited possibilities of development. 
The liquidity of the crude product makes petroleum unique among 
mineral raw materials, contributing wide commercial availability 
through the ease with which the substance may be mined and 
handled; while the magnitude of the resource has given confidence 
for the extensive mechanical developments essential to its use. Hence 
the employment of petroleum is deeply rooted among the practices 
and needs of modern life, and any tendency toward disuse of its 
essential products , 3 either through undue increase in price or from 
decline in production, will mark a turning point in material comfort 
and industrial advantage, the deferring of which becomes an object 
of universal concern. As the petroleum deposits of the United 
States have been drawn upon with extraordinary rapidity and the 
supplies have already suffered serious depletion, the matter of their 
approaching exhaustion assumes the light of immediate importance. 
The comfortable assertion that such considerations may be safely 
left to future generations does not apply to petroleum . 4 
1 An economic study of a limited resource. 
2 Part of the industrial activity of the eastern part of the country is now dependent 
upon fuel oil. 
3 See p. 65 for qualifications in respect to fuel oil. 
4 “ * * * petroleum is a priceless resource, for it can never be replaced. Trees 
can be grown again upon the soil from which they have been taken. But how can 
petroleum be produced? It has taken the ages for nature to distill it in her subter- 
ranean laboratory. We do not even know her process. We may find a substitute for it, 
but have not yet. It is practically the one lubricant of the world to-day. Not a rail- 
road wheel turns without its way being smoothed by it. We can make light and heat 
by hydroelectric power, but the great turbines move on bearings that are smothered in 
petroleum. From it we get the quick-exploding gas which is to the motor and the air- 
ship what air is to the human body. To industry, agriculture, commerce, and the pleas- 
ures of life petroleum is now essential.” (Franklin K. Lane in Reports of the Depart- 
ment of the Interior for 1915, Washington, vol. 1, p. 16.) 
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