PETROLEUM. 
71 
Encouragement of oil-shale dev elopment .— Although the present 
source of petroleum should be made to render its fullest service, 
we should at the same time find out what is going to take its place 
and prepare in advance for the transition, not ignoring the matter 
until it is forced by sheer necessity . 1 We have already seen that oil 
shale is the only successor in sight, and indeed some attention has 
already been devoted to this resource, especially as the richest part of 
it occupies land in possession of the Government. 
But oil shale being a leaner resource than that now worked for 
petroleum is not a rival but an understudy to the oil field. A shale- 
oil industry will come into life when the situation is ready for its 
advent. A constructive economic policy will neither force its 
premature birth nor will it permit conditions to retard its inception 
and growth when once its help is needed to supplement an inadequate 
oil-field production. The oil-shale matter, then, is merely part of the 
whole oil problem and can not be solved on its own merits alone. 
Indeed, it has no merits other than those reflected from a growing 
scarcity of petroleum. 
The oil-shale development will have to unfold under the influence 
of an economic necessity for shale oil. A constructive policy may 
contribute to that unfoldment in three ways, but further than that 
it can scarcely go safely or wisely. 
It can, in the first place, stabilize the production of petroleum so 
as to place this resource on the sound basis of ordinary mining pro- 
cedure. With this done, oil shale will face a resource with which it 
can cooperate, not an adversary which it must fight. So long as the 
oil fields of the country fill all the legitimate needs for petroleum 
products and contribute a large surplus for burning under boilers, 
there would appear to be no pressing need for shale oil . 2 
Secondly, the Government can prepare for the time when shale oil 
will be needed 3 by establishing an experimental plant on a commer- 
cial scale, equipped to work out on a practicable basis, with full 
by-product recovery, the most efficient practice adapted to the condi- 
tions of the domestic resource. Such a plant could start with the 
technique developed in the Scottish shale-oil industry, and by proper 
research build up a process which would insure the home activity 
from taking over any obsolescent features of the Scottish practice 
or from passing through a stage of technological immaturity. This 
1 We must remember that this country, thus far, has never had to face the exhaustion 
of a great resource. A somewhat analogous experience is afforded, however, in the case 
of the virgin forests. 
2 It is obvious that oil shale, to be profitable, must yield a full complement of 
products. There is still an oversupply of petroleum in respect to that consideration. 
An artificially stimulated or premature production of large quantities of shale oil wouid 
encourage the perpetuation of the current wasteful method of exploiting petroleum. 
3 That need has been temporarily brought into the present by circumstances arising out 
of the war (see pp. 35—39). 
