OIL INTERESTS SEEK TO LIMIT WORLD OUTPUT

Shannon News, 27 November 1928, Page 2

OIL INTERESTS SEEK TO LIMIT WORLD OUTPUT

. NEW YORK. Officials of leading American and foreign oil corporations, controlling the world’s most important producing fields are to meet here soon to discuss limiting the output of crude oil, it has just been learned from authoritative sources. . The movement was said to be the first on record to bring competing companies together on a worldwide basis for a discussion of the problem of overproduction. The largest American oil companies, including the Standard Oil Company, the Gulf Oil Corporation, the PanAmerican Petroleum and Transport Corporation, Sinclair Refining Company, and others were said to be interested in the scheme of international restriction of output. Officials of the Royal Dutch-Shell interests, the AngloPersian Oil Company, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, together with producers from the South American fields, are the foreign petroleum representatives who will be invited to attend the -conferences, which will be of an informal character. £200,000,000 Industry. According to one authority, overproduction in crude oil during 1927 cost the industry" nearly £200,000,000 in cash losses and depreciation of stocks. Since the first of the present year a movement has been under way to obtain an agreement-among the producing companies to limit the production from “flush” fields, or newlytapped wells which were capable of producing more than normal amounts of erdue oil. Conferences with Government officials were held, and during the last two months, it was added, an agreement has been in effect limiting the amount of oil being produced in the Seminole fields of the middle West, the Texas fields and the 'California producing areas. While the effort at international cooperation is the most active ever attempted in the oil industry, oil men declared, a paradoxical situation has developed within the United States. One of the keenest periods of retail competition between these two companies, they said, is behind the movement to establish chains of producercontrolled filling stations. Purchase by Dutch-Shell.

The first indication of this was seen by Wall Street in the recently reported purchase of the New England Oil Refining Company by the Royal Dutch-Shell interests. The New England company was said to have t acquired a large group of filling stations, which will give the Boyal Dutch organisation a direct outlet in what has previously been one of the strong territories of the Rockefeller interests.

Coincidently it was learned here that the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had incorporated a new subsidijfry, to be known as the Standard Oil Company of Pennsylvania. This organisation, it was understood, will take over retail operations of the Pennsylvania Lubricating Company. A number of oil companies which last year allowed independent dealers a margin of l|d to 2d a gallon on sales of gasoline, together with a bonus at the end of the year, have cut down the differential. In some- instances the margin is now as lo,w as Id with no bonus. This is being done, according to reports in independent retail circles, in an effort to aid the elimination of the private filling station in areas where producer-operated chains will possibly be established within the coming few years.