SUPPLIES OF OIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 December 1940, Page 2

SUPPLIES OF OIL

SHORTAGE IN THE AXIS COUNTRIES QUESTION NOT OF YEARS BUT OF MONTHS. BRITISH MINISTER’S SURVEY. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 4. Speaking of oil as a key commodity both in peace and war, Dr. Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, explained how his Ministry had co-op-erated with the Royal Air Force in indicating military targets for bombing operations. “From my point of view,” he said, “Bari, with its crude oil stocks, is the number one target in Italy, compared with industrial objectives like Milan and Turin.”

Emphasising that .the Axis countries would find themselves in a difficult situation regarding oil supplies in a period of months rather than years—if the R.A.F. continued its good work and Britain maintained her domination of the eastern Mediterranean—Dr. Dalton referred to the “distributional minimum” below which it was unsafe

for Germany and Italy to go. Supplies in bulk might be available to the Axis partners in different countries at widely-scattered points, but not at the right place and at the right moment.

At the end of the last war Germany still had millions of tons of oil in the aggregate, but not available at points where it was most needed, and at the present time a much higher distributional . minimum was necessary owing to the large territory occupied by Germany and the increase in mechanisation.

, There was no doubt that in a comparatively few months the margin would become uncomfortably narrow. Dealing with the Rumanian oil supplies, Dr. Dalton said that Rumania was unable to export her total available oil to Germany owing to transport' difficulties by road, rail, and water, and the last problem would be still more acute when the Danube became frozen for the months of December and January. The situation might be eased if sea transport to Italy were possible, but the British were preventing that in the eastern Mediterranean. Those people who advised the British to bomb the Rumanian oil wells should realise that the oil was not of the best quality when coming out of the ground, and the R.A.F. was doing far more effective work by bombing refineries where Germany was taking the trouble to make the oil suitable for military and commercial use.

Transport difficulties and Russia’s own needs for oil for her mechanised industry made assistance from that country likely to be small. Germany expected to cut down the amount of oil that was allowed to be used in the occupied territories to the furthest degree, but Dr. Dalton said he had taken that factor into account in his estimate of the growing deterioration of the oil position of the Axis Powers.