Underground Oil Reserves Reported Ample for Years

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 119, 5 June 1937, Page 18

Underground Oil Reserves Reported Ample for Years

NEW YORK. — Sufficient underground oil reserves to slake the motor age's enormous thirst for gasoline for several years to come have been reported to the American Petroleum Institute. Its committee on petroleum preserves estimated proven oil reserves of the United States on Jan. 1 at 13,063,000,000 barrels, an increase of 886,000 over the comparable figure a year previous des'pite record-breaking output and gasoline demand last year. New oil pools and development of old ones, the committee said, have been more than sufficient to cover the 2,044,000,000 barrels taken out of the ground in 1935 and 1936. The figures reminded oil men of carly postwar scares over possible early exhanstion of petroleum supplies in the United States. In common with other commodities, however, there has been a moderate decline in erude oil stocks :ibove the ground. Axtell J. Byles, president of the institute pointed out only "knowh and proven reserves" figures in the ostimate. "It takes no account of possible — indecd certain — ^future discoveries," he said. 'The figures do not mean the eountry has available only 13,0^63,000,000 barrels of oil but that it has proved reserves up to that amount. "The probability is that these proven reserves constitute only a sinall portion of the supply which will be made available. "But these reserves do assure that there is no imminent danger of shortagc. The known and proven reserves of to-day will bo supplemented by 'new discoveries. Beyond this there is the definite knowledge of many possible s.ubstitutes, obtainable by known processes and in substantially inexhaustible quantities, at reasonable prices. "