THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY.
Mr Charles Marvin, one of the first to direct attention to the Russian petroleum fields at Baku, in speaking lately of the transference of petroleum in bulk, said that America was at present the principal petroleum power. By the development of the petroleum fields at Baku, Russia had recently sprung into the position of the second petroleum power; and Mr Marvin thought that England should come to the front and occupy the third position as soon as possible. By the annexation of King Theebaw’s dominions, we had come into possession of the Burmese petroleum fields, and he thought steps ought to be taken at once by the Indian government to survey these fields and to throw them open to British capital and enterprise. Within the last few years, since the extension of the railway, considerable petroleum deposits had been discovered in Beluchistan, but he regretted that the Indian government had decided to make them a Crown monopoly. Still more recently, petroleum in abundance had been discovered in Egypt. Since he wrote in 1882 of the Caspian petroleum fields, eighty steamers had been placed on that inland sea to carry oil in tanks from Baku to the mouth of the Volga; and on the Volga there were upwards of a hundred vessels running. At present, nearly all the petroleum arriving in Europe from America was brought in barrels; several tank steamers were, however, being constructed on the Tyne for the purpose of carrying petroleum in bulk.
Mr Phillips, in lecturing at the Royal Aquarium on this subject, said that the total shipments of refined oil from America in 1885 amounted to 6,985,637 barrels, of which the United Kingdom received 1,269,723; London taking 666,964 barrels. If the total shipments were placed in barrels end to end, like a string of beads, they would reach from London to New York. It is estimated that the world’s consumption of illuminating oil amounts to 1,800,000 gallons every day. At the present price of oil as sold retail, and taking an ordinary circular-wick burner of forty candle power, it costs about three-sixteenths of a penny per hour, which was fifty per cent. cheaper than gas. In this connection, it may be mentioned that the Balloon Society of Great Britain is offering a prize for a cheap safety-lamp suitable for universal use. The annual production of mineral oil shale has continued to increase in Scotland, until in the present year it stands at the unprecedented figure of about two million tons.