The total production was 759,000,000 barrels of 42 gallons, against 684,000,000 barrels in 1920. It exceeds 100 million tons, easily beating the records of the preceding years. If we remember that half a century ago, it was only 66,000 tons, and that between 1913 and 1920 it has almost doubled, we shall see what a tremendous stimulus the great world War has been.
But fears are increasingly felt. Will it be possible to satisfy the dizzy increase in the consumption of oil? And do not certain countries already fear to see the reserves contained in their soil exhausted?
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Plutarch's Lives, Alexander the Great, chap. xliv.
[6] Cp. chap. xvi, The Struggle for the Oil-fields of Russia.
[7] Having fallen to 920,000 tons in 1919, it had increased to 1,030,086 tons in 1920 (12 per cent. increase). This slight recovery is the first noted; for six years Rumanian production steadily decreased. The worst year was 1917.
AMAZING INCREASE IN CONSUMPTION