Conservation Through Engineering / Extract from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior

by Franklin K. Lane

In 1908 the country's production of oil was 178,500,000 barrels, and there was a surplus above consumption of more than 20,000,000 barrels available to go into storage. In 1918, 10 years later, the oil wells of the United States yielded 356,000,000 barrels—nearly twice the yield of 1908—but to meet the demands of the increased consumption more than 24,000,000 barrels had to be drawn from storage. The annual fuel-oil consumption of the railroads alone has increased from 16⅔ to 36¾ million barrels; the annual gasoline production from 540,000,000 gallons in 1909 to 3,500,000,000 gallons in 1918. This reference to the record of the past may be taken not only as justifying the earlier appeal for Federal action, but as warranting deliberate attention to the oil problem of to-day.

Fuel oil, gasoline, lubricating oil—for these three essentials are there no practical substitutes or other adequate sources? The obvious answer is in terms of cost; the real answer is in terms of man power. Whether on land or sea, fuel oil is preferred to coal because it requires fewer firemen, and back of that, in the man power required in its mining, preparation, and transportation the advantage on the side of oil is even greater. So, too, the substitute for gasoline in internal-combustion engines, whether alcohol or benzol, means higher cost and larger expenditure of labor in its production.

There are large bodies of public land now withdrawn, which, under the new leasing bill which seems so near to final passage after seven years of struggle and baffled hope, will in all likelihood make a further rich contribution to the American supply.

OIL SHALE.

And beyond these in point of time lie the vast deposits of oil shale which by a comparatively cheap refining process can be made to yield vastly more oil than has yet been found in pools or sands. The value of this oil shale will depend upon the cheapness of its reduction, and this must be greatly lessened by the value of by-products before it can compete with coal or the oil from wells. There is every reason to believe, however, that some day the production of oil from shale will be a great and a permanent industry. And the country could make no better immediate investment than to give a large appropriation for the development of an economical shale-reducing plant.

So conservative an authority as the Geological Survey estimates that the oil shales of the Western States alone contain many times over the quantity of oil that will be recovered from our oil wells. The retorting of oil from oil shale has been a commercial industry for many years in Scotland and France; in fact, oil was obtained from oil shale here in the United States before the first oil well was drilled. The industry is in process of redevelopment to-day and if successful will assure us of a future supply, but at the best it will take years of time and a vast investment of capital to build up the industry to such a point that it can supply any considerable proportion of our needs. It is imperative, however, that the development of this latent resource be furthered and brought to a state of commercial development as soon as possible.

SAVE OIL.

Yet with all the optimism that can be justified I would urge a policy of saving as to petroleum that should be rigid in the extreme. If we are to long enjoy the benefits of a petroleum age, which we must frankly admit fits into the comfort-loving and the speed-loving side of the American nature, we must save this oil.

We must save it before it leaves the well; keep it from being lost; keep it from being flooded out, driven away by water. Through the cementing of wells in the Cushing field, Oklahoma, the daily volume of water lifted from the wells was decreased from 7,520 barrels to 628 barrels, while the daily volume of oil produced was increased from 412 barrels to 4,716. These instances show what can and should be done in our known oil fields.