A Handbook of the Petroleum Industry

Abstract

THIS work, which might aptly be termed the “Redwood” of American petroleum literature, has been written with a very definite purpose in view, namely, as an aid to the best utilisation of oil and the development of new resources to offset the imperrding shortage of supply in the United States. In a striking preface the editor-in-chief, Dr. Day, discusses dispassionately the truth of a situation which many people, both in Great Britain and in America, seek to gloss over, usually from self-interested motives. Briefly the situation is this: there exist less than twenty years' resources of petroleum in the United States at the present rate of supply and demand. To this we may add that one-fifth of the total oil requirements of that country latterly has been derived from Mexico; but in Mexico also there has been a startling decline in output noticeable recently, due principally to salt-water encroachment in some of the most productive wells. Small wonder, then, that serious-minded Americans (and Europeans too, for that matter) are apprehensive of the future, and that the several specialists responsible for this handbook are actuated by a common motive, that of contributing “their special knowledge to this volume, in the hope that more oil may be found and better utilisation be given it.”

A Handbook of the Petroleum Industry.

By Dr. D. T. Day, Editor-in-Chief. In 2 vols. Vol. 1. Pp. x + 964. Vol. 2. Pp. vi + 1006. (New York: J. Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1922.) 2 vols. 3l. 15s. net.