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Show OIL PROGRESS WEEK Just as individual U. S. oil companies present an annual an-nual report to their stockholders, the industry as a whole dedicates one week each year to a comprehensive report to the American people. From October 9 through 15, a period designated as Oil Progress Week, it invites the general gen-eral public to inspect its stewardship of a vital natural resource. , From its beginning in 1859, when the first successful U. S. oil drilling rig went into operation at Titusville, Pa., the oil industry has grown to a point where 42,000 separate separa-te businesses serve the American pertoleum consumer. When the first Titusville well was brought in successfully, success-fully, another well was being brought in similarly in New Brunswick. The Canadian driller, hearing of the Pennsylvania Pennsyl-vania field shut down his operation. North America, he said, could support only one well. The extent to which he was wrong is staggering. Today, we produce almost two and a half billion barrels bar-rels of oil a year, over six million a day. From 1900 to 1954, crude oil production increased by 264 per cent, Exploration Explora-tion proceeds at such a rapid rate that, despite our high oil consumption, we find one and a quarter barrels of oil for each barrel produced. Geologists believe that over three million square miles of our land 49.6 of the total to-tal U. S. land area are favorable for oil deposits. The vitality and vision of America's oil men contributed contrib-uted to our victory in Work Wars I and II. Today, that vitality again contributes to America's defensive force, the strongest deterrent to a new war that the world has ever seen. Research in petrochemistry, the rapidly growing baby of the oil industry, has enriched our standard of living and promises to revolutionize our lives even more in the years to come. Just as power farming, made possible by the introduction of petroleum, changed the life on American Ameri-can farms, so this new science of petrochemistry, with its many wonders for American agriculture and American life as a whole, promises to better our lot throughout the years to come. Oil Progress Week was appropriately named. America's Ameri-ca's free oil businesses are symbols of the industrial progress pro-gress made by our country through our system of free, unshackled un-shackled enterprise. America's oil men feel confident that those who take a long look at the oil industry this week, as they are invited to do, will come away more than ever proud of the land they live in. |