Still Not Enough

The Petroleum Administration for War had bad news to tell: gasoline stocks on the East Coast may soon fall to the level of a year ago, a low point of the war; fuel oil for home heating this winter will still be short. On top of this, the petroleum industry last week predicted: total petroleum needs for the Pacific war will be greater than the requirements for a two-front war.

What this seemed to mean was that the U.S., three months after V-E day, was still faced with an oil shortage. What it actually meant was that the character of the petroleum needs for war has changed. How well they are met will determine how much gas & oil civilians will get in the coming months.

The European war was mainly a gasoline war; the Pacific is a fuel-oil war. To get fuel oil in the mighty fleets ranging the western ocean, the flow of oil of the whole world has been changed.

Long lines of tankers once fanned out from Aruba to Europe, the U.S. and Pacific. Now, almost all of Aruba's and South America's refinery production of 750,000 barrels of oil a day is going through the Panama Canal to the Pacific; only a thin stream of crude is going north to the U.S.

California is pouring most of her 952,000 barrels a week westward; Texas and the Gulf fields are shipping another 2,700,000 barrels by ship and by rail & pipeline to East and West Coast ports; the Middle East is supplying another 566,000 barrels a day. Before long, oil may again be coming out of Borneo. But it may be only a trickle of 55,000 barrels daily.

Despite this outpouring, there is still not enough oil. By the first quarter of 1946, total Allied requirements, civilian and military, will be 154,000 barrels a day greater than the supply. One reason: a tanker carrying oil from the Gulf Coast to Europe burned up only 8,000 barrels on the way over and back; the long trip to the Pacific bases eats up 21,000 barrels.

PAW hopes to meet all needs by simply stepping up fuel oil production, hopes to keep gasoline rationing at the present level. If this fails, then PAW may have to change refining procedures, i.e., make fuel oil & kerosene at the expense of civilian gas, once more pinch the motorist.

There is another threat to civilian drivers: OPA is now giving out gas coupons for more gas than PAW is allotting civilians, thus drawing down reserves as much as 100,000 barrels a day faster than anticipated. Before long, there may have to be a reckoning.

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