36 BULLETIN 102 , UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
rious and unexampled Cushing pool 1 in Oklahoma, The demorali- 
zation of the normal course of international commerce also added a 
destructive element to the marked abnormal conditions affecting the 
industry, but readjustments in foreign trade were quickly effected 
and the unfavorable consequences of external circumstances were not 
long continued or far-reaching. Toward the end of 1915, owing to 
the declining output of the Cushing pool, to the acquisition by a few 
strong companies of a vast accumulation of surplus petroleum in the 
Mid-Continent field, thus withdrawing it from the open market, 
and to the general increase in automobile consumption of petroleum 
products, a tension between supply and demand developed which set 
prices on a steady climb, renewed confidence in the situation, and 
started a phenomenal wave of wildcat exploration in search of new 
supplies. This impetus met with a quick and successful response in 
the way of output ; so much so indeed that the latter part of 1916 saw 
a measure of overproduction, with consequent price depression; less 
marked, however, than the sustained period of 1914-15. This 
second slump was a passing incident, for the demand for petroleum 
was too insistent to be met with continued ease. The advent of 1917, 
then, saw prices and demand again on the upward grade and at a 
height overlooking the attainments of the past. 
With the entrance of the United States into the war in April, 1917, 
it became very evident that the petroleum fields of the country had 
an important, and at the same time, difficult role to play — important, 
because an enlarging demand was in prospect to maintain the in- 
dustrial and military activities of the allied cause; difficult, because 
production, hampered by a growing complexity of circumstances and 
already shoved to an extreme of activity by favorable prices, pre- 
sented no prospect of filling the total demand, with little chance of 
the margin being covered b}^ a growdh of imports from Mexico. 
As a result the petroleum resource to-day faces a demand that it 
can not meet. This situation is depicted graphically in figure 10. 
It may there be seen that the relations of 1917 can not be sustained 
throughout 1918 without the arrival of critical conditions, and a con- 
tinuation through 1919 is impossible. The United States is now 
(April, 1918) consuming and exporting more petroleum than she is 
producing from her own wells and receiving from Mexico. The dis- 
crepancy, which is growing from month to month, is covered by a 
draft upon the petroleum storage in this country, the amount on 
hand January 1, 1918, being about 153,000,000 barrels. 2 And while 
1 This pool, from June, 1914, until April, 1915, when it attained a maximum produc- 
tion estimated at 300,000 barrels daily (over one-third of the output of the entire 
country), dominated the petroleum industry of the whole United States. 
2 It may be pointed out that this storage can not safely be reduced below a certain 
minimum figure, say 50,000,000 barrels, needed to fill the pipe lines and keep the whole 
industry in course of operation. 
