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Show TESTS MADE TO AVERT OIL SHORTAGE IN U. S. Businessmen are testing a new process to avert depletion of Uncle Sam's petroleum reserves while bureaucrats continue their dire warnings of an impending oil shortage and do nothing much about it. Oil has been a lively subject in the capital ever since early days of the war, when Petroleum Pe-troleum Administrator Ickes predicted pre-dicted the shortages that have taken cars off the roads and sent househ o 1 d e r s hunting winter wraps. The 71-year-old Ickes, who is said to glory in his reputation, as the nation's "No. I sour-puss" and even wrote a book entitled "Autobiography of a Carmudge-on'' Carmudge-on'' has more recently made a foreboding forecast that our oil reserves will be exhausted in 14 years if the present rate of production pro-duction is maintained. Industry Acts . . . However, tests designed to augment aug-ment the reserves are under way in California where private industry's indus-try's engineers are pressure-pumping water into an old, nearly-exhausted oil well in the belief that water will float the oil out of the sands and up to a point whence it can be pumped. Experts say not more than 25 per cent of the oil has been extracted ex-tracted from 'California's fields by the usual extraction technique. They estimate this "lost oil" at over 20 billion barrels for California Califor-nia and 70 to 80 billion barrels for the whole United States. Even with production up to 1,677,753,000 barrels as in 1944, recovery of that much oil would add quite a few years to the life of the domestic petroleum industry. The California engineers aren't making and wild and indiscreet claims of success for their experiment! experi-ment! But preliminary tests show favorable results. Whatever the outcome, the project furnishes a good illustration of the difference between the businssman's system of doing something to remedy a bad situation, and the bureaucratic bureaucrat-ic system of just talking about it. |