RUMANIA’S OIL RESOURCES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20037, 8 September 1939, Page 2

RUMANIA’S OIL RESOURCES

INTEREST TO GERMANY DEMAND IN WARTIME There afe many references fn- the newspapers to the importance of Rumania’s oil supplies to Europe. An explanation of the situation by an economic correspondent in the York-. shire Post will be of interest. The writer says:— “Germany is one of the few great Powers whose tanker fleet is not proportionate to her imports. The tonnage of her tanker fleet totals 190,000 gross tons, and she is vitally dependent on Norwegian tankers for the transport of her supplies. “The capacity of Greater Germany's refineries amounts to 2,700,000 tons. “At present Germany is able to satisfy virtually the whole of her petrol or motor fuel supplies from domestic sources and has to rely for some 60 per cent of her peace-time needs of other petroleum products on foreign, distant and uncertain sources. “Her wartime needs would be a different proposition, Herr H. Steinberger reckons that she will need at least 12;650,000 tons of oil in the first year of war. “Barring Soviet Russia, Rumania is the largest producer of petroleum in Europe, and, what is equally important, she has substantial proven oil reserves underground yet to be won. Rumania’s 1938 output of crude oil totalled 6,600,000 tons, and her known reserves are reckoned at 114,000,000 tons. Experience in Great War “With Turkey and Bulgaria as her allies Germany was able to win a victory over Rumania in the early part of the last war by executing an enveloping movement. Late in the autumn of 1916 the Allied mission operating in .concert with the Rumanian Government succeeded in putting the fields out of action to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Central Powers. “A few months ago, Germany had Plans in hand for the establishment of a pipeline from Rumania through Ruthenla and Slovakia to Vienna. Now she has become bolder. With the annihilation of Czechoslovakia, Germany has now a strategic ascendancy over the lands within the Carpathian arc. “Unfortunately for the Third Reich, the Rumanian are on her wrong side in a strategic sense. The Oil-bearing, belt has as its centre Ploestl, not /ar north of Bucharest. “Thanks to the Anti-Comintern Pact,, with Hungary’s connivance Germany might succeed in overrunning Transylvania, but she would then have the task of forcing the Carpathian passes .into Wallachia. This would be no easy matter, especially if the Rumanian army were supported by Russian artillery and aircraft."