OIL & PETROL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1939, Page 5

OIL & PETROL

GERMANY’S SUPPLIES DIMINISHING’ LITTLE HOPE OF HELP FROM RUSSIA. EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES. By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. NEW YORK. November 30. The Washington correspondent of the “New York Times,” in an exclusive dispatch, states that military and naval quarters say Germany is facipg a serious situation in her rapidlydiminishing oil and petrol supplies. Britain and France are getting millions of barrels from the United States, but not a single barrel of American oil is believed to have reached Germany. The frantic efforts in Germany. to develop synthetic petrol factories, which the Nazis are hopeful will be operating in 1940, are considered evidence of the gravity of the situation. German hopes of Russian supplies are baseless, since Russia is pressed to fill her own needs, particularly of motor fuels, of which she imported 248.000 barrels from the United States in September. Germany’s annual petrol requirements for her planes, estimated to number between 6000 and 8000, would be 12.000.000 barrels, aside from her other requirements. The near exhaustion of her reserves since the Polish campaign may explain the lack of mass flights over Britain and France now and the absence of an attack on the Western Front.