Moaning Giant

Prominent in the sick ward of industry is a great, low-moaning giant whose condition has defied able economic physicians, deft financial surgeons. No sooner is one of his many ailments cured than his rising fever and unhappy bellows proclaim the onrush of another disease. He is the U. S. oil industry, who sometimes agrees with the doctors and sometimes shouts defiance at them. Many times the doctors cannot agree themselves. All year the oil giant's condition has grown steadily more alarming and his suffering is communicated directly to the many thousands of persons on his payroll as laborers and dividend-getters. Popular demand will keep him from dying but it alone can never cure him.

Most active of the consulting physicians at present is Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, M. D. Last week Dr. Wilbur was glad to announce that one of the giant's pains has been partially, temporarily, deadened. For Standard Oil Co. of Indiana finally agreed that for 90 days it will curtail its Venezuela production and imports by 23%. This compares to a 25% reduction by Royal Dutch-Shell. Although independent oilmen have wanted a total embargo or at least a tariff, this voluntary partial curtailment of imports was welcomed by them. Coming a week before the meeting of the Federal Oil Conservation Board, it will give that body something concrete to work upon, said Secretary Wilbur.

Texas. Newest of the giant's ailments has been the opening of the prodigious new pool in Eastern Texas. Last week its production mounted so rapidly that the Texas Railroad Commission revised the original proration figures for the field from 50,000 bbl. to 75,000 bbl, with an ultimate flow in 90 days of 125,000 bbl. Present capacity of the field is estimated at 500,000 bbl. per day.

Independent producers in the field denounce proration, as do lease-owners. A large group of them have retained onetime (1927-31) Governor Dan Moody as attorney, will seek an injunction against proration. A champion of these discontented forces is Carl L. Estes, editor of the Morning Telegraph and Courier-Times in Tyler, town of 17,113 (pre-boom figure) in the heart of the new field. He has written sharp editorials denouncing proration, caused mass-meetings to be held in almost all the new boomtowns. Nervous, crippled, Editor Estes is 33, has been in the newspaper business 17 years. A leader in the affairs of Tyler, he was dismayed when Capt. J. F. Lucey, U. S. Government investigator, said that during 1930 that town suffered the worst depression in the U. S. for a community of its size. In the boom he sees new prosperity for Tyler, hence his bitterness in flaying those who would halt the gushers' heavy flow.

Oklahoma-- An old illness of the sick giant lies in the rich Oklahoma City field, now under strict proration. Last week Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corp. threatened to reopen this wound by seeking an injunction against proration in the field. Often Oilman Harry Ford Sinclair has been accused of leading the price-cutting. Last week his house-organ, the Sinclair Reflector, asked "Who Killed Cock Robin?" and answered that the big oil companies did it by bootlegging oil at cheap prices. "Sinclair did not stoop to subterfuge or practice evasion," said the Reflector.

Soviet. What may be U. S. oil's most serious affliction of all is Soviet oil. Last week the U. S. S. R. celebrated the completion in two and one-half years of the oil phase of its Five-Year Plan. But last week World Petroleum scouted the rumor that Soviet oil may capture the rich Chinese market (chiefly in kerosene) from U. S. interests. It was thought that the U. S. S. R. was afraid that by fighting for China it would antagonize Standard Oil of New York and its fiancee, Vacuum Oil, large purchasers of Soviet oil.

Temperature. The chart of the U. S. oil giant's condition is a price chart. In California last week came the third drastic price-cut in three weeks. High-grade California oil sells in Los Angeles now for 35-c- a barrel against $1.48 at the start of the year. Mid-Continent oil is selling at 53-c- against 81-c- at the first of the year. Last week gasoline stocks reached a new high for the year of 47,444,000 bbl. against 42,818.000 bbl. Jan. 1 and 55,239,000 bbl. a year ago. Refineries were operating at 65.3% of capacity against 70.9% at the same time last year. During the first two months crude oil production was 126,636,000 bbl. against 153,964,000 and imports 9,142,000 bbl. against 9,770,000.

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