The most prolific sources of petroleum are in sedimentary strata of the Carboniferous and Tertiary periods. Because the most detailed geologic work is insufficient to provide for the appropriate evaluation of the numerous factors involved in the occurrence of petroleum, and because only a relatively small percentage of the areas of sedimentary rocks throughout the world have been examined geologically in any appreciable detail, it is difficult to estimate the future supply of petroleum or to predict that large accumulations will be discovered in any particular region.
The principal countries contributing to the world’s production of petroleum rank as follows in general order of importance: United States, Russia, Mexico, Dutch East Indies, Roumania, India, Persia and Galicia. Other countries produce less than 2 per cent. of the annual total. The greatest change that is likely to come in the geographical distribution of production is a larger output from the countries bordering the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Persian and Mesopotamian fields. Mexico now ranks second to the United States, and South American countries promise to become more important contributors to the world’s production than they now are. Russia is expected to become ultimately one of the chief producers of petroleum.
Within the next decade, through improved methods of production and through the further amalgamation of producing, transporting, refining, and marketing companies into strong units, the output will undoubtedly be larger and will be more economically produced. In the refining of petroleum it is probable that improved methods will make possible the recovery of a larger percentage of lighter products from low-grade petroleum. Internal-combustion engines are being modified so as to run on petroleum products of lower volatility than gasoline. The use of petroleum as fuel under railroad and marine boilers is expected to increase enormously in the next decade. As the output of the producing fields declines, the vast deposits of oil shale in the western United States will be developed as a source of oil.
So far as is known, political control of the petroleum resources of the world is determined by state sovereignty (see [Plate I], page 7). In normal times, the United States controls politically over 66 per cent. of the present output of petroleum. Russia and Mexico ranked second and third in 1917, controlling 13.6 per cent. and 10.9 per cent., respectively. The remaining 9 per cent. was controlled by Great Britain, Holland, Persia (British government owned), Roumania, Austria-Hungary, Japan, Peru, Germany, Argentina and Italy in the order named.
The [table] showing the nationality and the approximate extent of the commercial control exercised by the dominant interests in each of the principal oil-producing countries, and [Fig. 2] (page 12) are the best possible summaries of commercial control. United States capital is supreme in the commercial control of the petroleum industry of the Western Hemisphere. British and British-Dutch interests easily dominate the petroleum situation in the Eastern Hemisphere. France no longer exercises control over any important fields. Japanese interests, controlling at present all the oil fields of Japan, may be expected to make large investments in the petroleum fields of Mexico, China and Russia.
CHAPTER II
COAL
By George S. Rice and Frank F. Grout
USES OF COAL
Coal is among the most important of all minerals. It furnishes power and heat, and its distillation yields a great number of useful materials, such as gas for lighting and fuel, explosives, ammonia, aniline dyes, etc. Coke, which is bituminous coal with the more volatile constituents removed by distillation, is used for smelting metallic ores; and thus the contiguity of fields of high-grade coking coal and of iron ore determined the location of the centers of steel industry, which are the very main-springs of our modern machine-made civilization. Near such coal districts, other manufactures of all kinds naturally developed, the coal being cheaply available for power and constituting practically the only source of power in regions where cheap hydro-electric power is not available. About 66 per cent. of the coal mined goes to the production of power, including transportation; about 12 per cent. to coking and the by-products; and about 22 per cent. to the heating of buildings.
Commercial coal is of three varieties: (1) anthracite (Pennsylvania anthracite is popularly termed hard coal), and semi-anthracite containing a high percentage of fixed carbon and a relatively low percentage of the volatile constituents (3 to 12 per cent.); (2) bituminous (ambiguously termed “soft coal” in the United States), containing less fixed carbon and more volatile matter (12 to 40 per cent.); and (3) lignite, containing a still smaller proportion of fixed carbon and a large proportion of water. Of the bituminous coals, some coke satisfactorily, but many do not, so that good coking coals are highly prized. Anthracite, because it makes no smoke, is in great demand for house heating; whereas bituminous coal is chiefly used for power production, including locomotive and steamship firing. Lignites as a rule are used only where the better grades of coal are not available.
Coal was first used for heating before steam power came into use, and iron was smelted with charcoal instead of with coke as at present.