OIL AS FUEL.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1953, 9 January 1914, Page 3

OIL AS FUEL.

■ ■ ■• ■ , ,—-4- .— . FUTURE POSSIBILITIES. The Commercial Agent for the Xevr South Wales Government in, America, Mr. Quinn, in a recent -report to the Government, mentions that California oil is the principal fuel for locomotives as far north as Washington and across the Sierra, and the Cascad-p Range, its freedom from sparks serving as a protection against forest fires, as compared with coal or wood fuel. ' It is used almost exclusively on inland and coastwise- steamers, and to an increasing extent by the trans-Pacific steamers. It has oven displaced coal on Puget Sound, many of the Canadian-Pacific fleet plying between Vancouver, Victoria, and other points having been equipped for oil burning. Many of the. ships coming to tho Pacific Coast on the- completion of the Canal as a- commercial waterway will doubtless bo oil burners, or alternately oil and eo-al burners. The Panama Canal thus coincides fortunately with tho enormous oil production of California, which is aiisworablo for 40 per cent, of tho total oil production of the United States. Delivered at the ship's sido in San 1 Francisco, oil costs 80 cents per barrel. Three and one-half barrels, the equivalent of one ton of coal., would thus cost Sdol. 80 cent 3, as against British • Columbia, coal Gdol., and Australian coal 7dol. each per ton! When to this ceo- • noniy is added the remarkable economy 1 of the stokehold and other advantages, i the future of oil fuel is not a matter of i conjecture. ■ . "I am omitting," says tho writer, "the factor of coal from the Eastern ■ States when tlio Canal is opened, and also the question of the Australian coal ■ trade with the Pacific Coast of South i America, Concerning this latter, how- ■ ever, it seems highly.probable that Aus- : tralian coal shipments to Valparaiso • will not be seriously affected by com- , petition from the coalfields of.' North : 1 America,."