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Show IVASTNESS OF WYOMING'S OIL " SUPPLY DEFIES IMAGINATION Figures Based on Government Report Indicate Petroleum Resources of State Are Almost Beyond Human Comprehension. Special lo Tho Tribune. CHEYEXXE, Wyo., March 30. Enfolded En-folded within the geological convolutions con-volutions of Wyoming, awaiting release through the magi,. 0f human hu-man ingenuity and . industry is an amount of petroleum sufficient to form a lake in which 120 times as many people as inhabit the face of the earth might be submerged and drowned and the topmost tier of the immense mass of bodies made lifeless by such a monstrous mon-strous tragedy yet lie more than a mile beneath the unruffled surface of this vast, pool. Incredible! V'es. Unbelievable! No, for the statement is based on a reasonable reason-able estimate combined with application applica-tion to this estimate of the cold logic 01 merciless mathematics. A recent, appraisement ap-praisement of Wyoming's natural resources re-sources which has been published by congressional authority credits to this state lO.linu.OOO acres of petroleum lands with an undeveloped value of $1000 an acre for $10,000,000,000 for the whole area. The. estimate of value is predicated on a valuation of the petroleum contents con-tents while in the ground of 10 cents a barrel, which means that a valuation valua-tion of $1000 an acre is representative of an acre oil. content of 10,000 barrels bar-rels and an oil content of the 10,000,-000 10,000,-000 acres of 100,000.000,000 barrels, or 5,000,000,000,000 gallons. Five trillions of gallons would fill a reservoir one mile square and four and one-half miles high. In a. tank of those dimensions there might lie 216,000,000,000 human bodies the bodies of 120 times as many persons as the 1.300,000,000 individuals indi-viduals who compose the population of the earth and yet the tomnost tier of these tightly packed bodies would be more than one mile below the rim of the reservoir. Magnitude Inconceivable. Comparison with conceivable areas, volumes, distances, etc., is essential to comprehension of the magnitude of Wyoming's otherv&se inconceivable petroleum pe-troleum resources as estimated in the appraisement published by the United States government. Ten millions viewed merely as a mathematical sum is not extraordinarily impressive, but 10,000,000 acres is 15,600 square miles and 15,600 square miles is the area covered cov-ered by the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware. Wyoming's appraised petroleum lands are equal to the combined' areas of those three The' 100,000,000.000 barrels, or 5,000,-000,000,000 5,000,-000,000,000 gallons, of petroleum estimated esti-mated to be contained in folds of Wyoming's Wyo-ming's Geological strata have a volume vol-ume of 068,314,468,000 cubic feet. The most colossal human constructive achievement is the great wall of China. It has an average foot cross section of 400 cubic feet, is 1500 miles long and contains 3,168,000,000 cubic feet. Wyoming's Wyo-ming's petroleum is sufficient to fill 211 tanks the size, of the great wall of China. Two hundred and eleven such tanks would extend 316,500 miles, or nearly thirteen times around the earth. Next to the great wall of China the most stupendous structure ever reared by human labor and ingenuity is the pyramid of Cheops,, which originally was 774 feet square, 481 feet high and contained 82,111,000 cubic feet of masonry. ma-sonry. Wyoming's petroleum is sufficient suffi-cient to fill 8130 tanks the size and shape of the pyramid of Cheops. These tanks standing end to end would extend ex-tend 193 miles. If built through, the eastern seaboard such a row of tanks would form a prodigious, saw-toothed rampart reaching from New York City to Tampa, Fla. Would Destroy Prussianism. The capacity of the average tank car is 0500 gallons and its length forty feet. Wyoming's petroleum is sufficient to fill 769,230,768 tank cars. That number of tank cars would form a train 5,827.-506 5,827.-506 miles long. If such a train were traveling a mile a minute a person undertaking un-dertaking to count the cars as they passed would have to count continuously continu-ously for more than eleven years before be-fore the last car passed. A train of this 'length would reach 233 times around the earth. There is in the United States 231,179 miles of railroad. rail-road. To place a train containing Wyoming's Wyo-ming's petroleum on this trackage it would be necessary to pile the cars twenty-five deep and there then would remain unaccommodated enough cars to form a train extending twice around the earth. If Wyoming's petroleum were placed in barrels of fifty gallons capacity each and these barrels were staclted in tiers, 1.000,000 barrels to the tier, they would form a. pile 'more than twenty-nine twenty-nine miles high. If by some wizardy of science Wyoming Wyo-ming V petroleum might be expanded into vapor, this vapor massed in a cloud over Germany. Turkey in Europe, Bulgaria Bul-garia and 24,931 square miles of Austria, Aus-tria, then precipitated in the form of rain, the area related, which is 287,-711 287,-711 square miles, would be covered with oil to a depth of one inch. Ignition Igni-tion of this inflammable rain would result, re-sult, in destruction of all life and property prop-erty within the area described and Prussianism suddenly would cease to be a menace to humanity. If at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence 143 years ago the forefathers of American liberty lib-erty had celebrated the event by light-ine light-ine a beacon which might be fed by Wyoming's petroleum and this beacon since had been burning continuously and consuming oil at the rate of lono gallons a second of time, there would todav remain unconsumed of Wyoming's Wyo-ming's petroleum 508. 728, C0n gnllons. enough to keep the liberty flame supplied sup-plied for another sixteeo years. j Ample "Flivver" Gas. The gasoline content of Wyoming's i petroleum is estimated to be 2,000.000,-1 2,000.000,-1 000,000 gallons. This amount of gacv I line, consumed at the rote of one gal-' gal-' Ion for each fifteen miles, would ' be I sufficient to drive an automobile 10.-I 10.-I 000.000,000,000 miles, or 1,200.000, iiOO ' times around the earth. Speeding at j the rate of a mile a minute, the auto mobile would travel for 55.000.000 vears before its engine had exhausted ! V oming 's gasoiiue. The distance separating sep-arating the 'earth from the sun is 9,.-.80'''. 9,.-.80'''. 000 miles. Wyoming's irasnlino is sufficient to drive an automobile on 153,374 round trips between earth and sun', the car covering 195,600,000 miles on each trip. Tbe motorist who today obtains gasoline gas-oline at 25 rents a gallon is fortunate. Wyoming's gasoline, marketed at 25 cents a gallon, would bring $500,000,-000,000. $500,000,-000,000. If the residue remaining after the extraction of the gasoline were worth $1 a barrel, the resulium of Wyoming's Wyo-ming's petroleum after the removal of the gasoline content would be worth ,60.0uo,0OO,000 and the combined value of the residium and the gasoline would be ' 500, 000, 000,000. Five hundred and sixtv billions of dollars represents .T2.Sb0.0'i0 for each of the 200,000 inhabitants in-habitants of Wyoming, $5000 for each inhabitant of the United States, or $329 for each individual of the human race. Wyoming last year produced approximately approx-imately 0,00u,000 barrels of petroleum. At this rate of production the state's petroleum would not be exhausted until un-til 10,000 years had elapsed. The United States is credited with an annual an-nual petroleum production of 13,469,-703.460 13,469,-703.460 gallons and the world with a production of 19,346,655,024 gallons. Produced at . the rate of the United States' production, Wyoming's petroleum petro-leum would last 371 years and, produced pro-duced at the rate of the world's production pro-duction it would not bo exhausted for 258 years. |