RUMANIAN OIL OUTPUT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 304, 12 May 1941, Page 2

RUMANIAN OIL OUTPUT

A MARKED DECLINE German j T 's need for more Soviet oil has been intensified not only by the damage done to refineries, synthetic plants, and stocks 1 by the R.A.F., but also by heavy decline in Rumanian output. Official statistics reveal that the total output of Rumanian crude oil fn October, 1940, was 415,000 tons, against 530,000 for October, 1939. though borings have increased by 11 per cent. This clearly proves that many of the ohder borings are yielding • considerably less than before. Rumania's oil exports for the first nine months; of 1940 is returned ai 2. 700,000 tons, as: against 3,160,000 for the first nine months of 1939. This decline in export has. been mainly caused) by the blockading U tiie sea routes toward Germany, but it is also due in part to the internal political upheavals, the successive losses of territory, and the earthquakes. Further evidence in support of this explanation is afforded by the fact that exports to England .in the first nine months of 1940 totalled 17.6 per cent of the whole, whereas for the corresponding period of 1939 the proportion was only 13 per cent, while the amount Germany obtained declined from 1,250,000 tons, or 39.G per cent of the whole, in the first nine months of 1939* to 975, 000 tons, or 3G.1 per cent, for the same period in 1940. The oil that the Germans were unable to transport by sea loutes could not be sent by »-ail mainly owing toi the lack of Lank-wagons.