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Show GiTliGsefl BIG OIL MSB, Indications Point to In-1 i definite Continuance of Record Business.. ! Laming of the big oil companies for tlvi year now ending ai t,!e bcst on record, says the Moston News Bureau. Not only have prominent .Standard Oil .ompanics made a i'Litering showing this: year, but leading independents alu are ejo.slng a year of unusual prosperity. Indications point to a continuance of jecord business. Producing com pa nies are pra.-llcally assured ot greater business, a ihev have been unable to keep up with demand for crude oil in the lust several months, notwithstanding energetic et forts to Sliced up production. In the last few rnonihs thev have, produced crude at rate ot l,uua,i)0o barrels a day. the greatest record rec-ord evf-r known. The country's re.tining capacity is about 1 ,2;Vj,i0i barrels a day nod is iH-irn-' increased. War demand and i his country's needs of oil will rr-.riutre evorv gallon that can be refined, so that the industry as a whole is facing the greatest period of prosperity ever known. The oil industry's only point of apprehension appre-hension seenfs to be price fixing, and this rear constantly is growing less. There ha.s hfr-eri no price fixing as yet, and the looser it is delayed the more the leeling grows that there" will be none. It is practically prac-tically taken as established that there will be no fixing of crude oil prices in the present condition of insufficient produc- . tion. Any interference with present output out-put and development of new fields would he regarded as tending to operate disastrously disas-trously on an Industry essential to successful suc-cessful piosecution of tho war. 'J' he re Is a better regard for good oil securities and the buying of them is coming com-ing from some of the best sources. The recognized oil trade publications take the position that oil prospects are bright. The Oil fc Cas Journal says: "Men who have money to invest need not be afraid to place it In legitimate oil fkdd enterprises." The Oil City Derrick say.s : "Capital lias a great field for investment invest-ment in the oil industry at this time. On opportunities are greater than they have been at any time in the past." Crude oil prices now are the highest in more than forty years they are practically practical-ly the highest ever known. They will go higher, in the opinion of oil men. The oil business differed from most industries in-dustries in the last few years. It never got on a war basis. Any advance in prices was the result of strict operation of basic economic laws. As a matter of fact, the low prices of 1915, which resulted re-sulted from the flooding of the market with the vast oil of the mid -continent field at a time when demand was slack-were slack-were abnormal. Tho recovery of oil prices since then has no more than made good the loss in that period of abnormally low prices, if it has done that. |