OCR Text |
Show Present Supply Of Oil Not Equal To Heavy Demand The American people cannot sit easy when they consider the short supply of petroleum, absolutely ab-solutely unequal to the task of supplying industrial and domestic domes-tic demand in this country. There is no lag in the output of oil but the shortage has been caused by a demand that climbs faster than supply can be increased. in-creased. Oil space heaters, the experts say, have more than doubled since 1941, there are half again as many oil-burners, more than half as many tractors, trac-tors, and over four times the number of Diesel locomotives. Obviously, with this jumping demand, the supply is short. President Robert E. Wilson, of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, faces the problem and frankly proposes that coal and natural gas take up any further increase in the heating load, pointing out that transportation and national defense can hardly shift from the use of petroleum. A Congressional committee, facing the problem, relies upon voluntary reduction of demand. It also suggests a special commission com-mission to push pilot plants for extracting oil from coal and shale, allocate steel to pipelines for distribution of natural gas and setting aside some resources as a reserve for a possible war emergency. Mr. Wilson looks to the offshore off-shore oil fields and, with some reservations that are easily understood, toward the Middle East as possible sources of increased in-creased supplies. In the meantime, mean-time, the use of oil continues to increase much faster than the supply is available and the inevitable in-evitable consequence is that somebody in the United States will have to do without oil. |