WORLD'S OIL SUPPLY.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1920, Page 9

WORLD'S OIL SUPPLY.

BRITAIN HOLDS THE LION'S SHARE. "The great oilfields of the United states are neariug exhaustion, • and botore very long America will have to purchase from British companies " RecenUy Mr. E. Mackay Edgar, head of the big firm 0 f Sperling and Co., gave expression to some very confident views on the ability of Great Britain to hold her own against American shipping competition. . °

In an article just published in Sperlings Journal, Mr. Jidgar makes an equally optimistic deliverance on the future of the world's supply of petroleum, which he is convinced lies in British, and not in American, hands. A recent report of the United States Geological Survey," says Mr. Edgar, states that there is only enough oil in the ground to last 20 years Later "'Ports put the duration of the, domessupplies at no more than 22 years, America has recklesslj r , and in 60 years, run through a legacy that, properly conserved, should have lasted her for at least a century and a half. Already, though few people realise it, An. •iica is an importer of oil. "Last year she imported from Mexico 38,000,000 barrels of oil of 42 gallons each. Like the far-sighted men they are, however, they are now diligently scouring the world for new oilfieldsonly to find, almost everywhere they turn, that British enterprise lias beeii before them.

"We hold in our hands, then," concludes Mr. Kdgar, "the secure control of the future of the world's oil supply. We are sitting tight on what must soon become the lion's share of a'raw material indispensable to every manufacturing country, and unobtainable in sufficient quantities outside the sphere of British influence-

I estimate that if their present, curve of consumption, especially of highgrade products, is maintained, the Americans in ten years' t'iime, will be importing 500,000,000 barrels of oil a year. At two dollars a barrel that means an annual payment of £200,000,000 per annum, most, if not all, of which will .find its w#y ia\a British pockets,"