26 
BULLETIN 102, 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 a to a per capita basis, 
Per capita rate of 
production (1917). 
Mined to date, 
1859-1917. 
Now underground 
(1918) and avail- 
able under present 
methods of mining. 
Petroleum 
3.4 barrels 
42 barrels 
70 barrels. 
a The figures are given in round numbers based on a population of 100,000,000 and are calculated from 
data presented by the Secretary of the Interior in Senate Document No. 310, 64th Congress, 1st session, 
Feb. 3, 1916, p. T7, 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 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 
1670 I860 13*70 N00 1410 1920 1900 
BARRELS 
500,000,000 
400 , 000 , 0 00 
800 , 000,00 0 
200,000, 000 
1 00 , 000,000 
Fig. 6. — Chart showing the present tendency of the United States in respect to 
its unmined reserve of petroleum. Data from U. S. Geological Survey. 
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 6. 
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 
