Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...United States is in imminent danger of a petroleum shortage which will swell imports, send up prices of motor fuel, and force a more general use of small, low-powered cars...
Reserves in U. S. petroleum beds, according to Engineer Brooks, are estimated at ten to twelve billion barrels, and modern methods of appraisal render unexpected "finds" of considerable extent unlikely. At the present rate of consumption reserves are enough for twelve or 14 years, but production falls off sharply before literal exhaustion is in sight. Oil can be obtained from shale and coal; the necessary equipment, however, would cost billions of dollars. "Alcohol," said Dr. Brooks, "as a motor fuel is a question of politics and farm subsidies, not of economics," cannot compete with gasoline until the price of gasoline...
More cheerful was Phillips Petroleum Co., which more than a year ago instituted a fifth advance in gasoline manufacture. Gasoline was first made by boiling oil, next by squeezing gasoline vapor out of natural gas ("casing-head process"), later by distillation of crude oil ("cracking"), finally by hydrogenation. The Phillips process was polymerization-formation of heavy molecules from light ones with heat, pressure, catalysts (chemical activators). By this method lightweight derivatives formerly wasted or diverted to by-products are made into high-grade fuel. Trade papers pointed out that if all gaseous hydrocarbons produced in cracking were utilized...
...ruined merchandise and cleaning buildings, much of the rest for damage to lungs and respiratory tracts. Salt Lake City's smoke problem is especially acute because the city lies in a natural bowl whose rim tends to keep the pall from dispersing. Metallurgical coke and petroleum carbon, supposedly "smokeless," have been tried there without success. The problem can be solved by treating bituminous coal with superheated steam at 1,000 to 1,400° F., driving off the smoke-producing ingredients. Cost of treatment...
Lawyer Morrow was acting as agent for Stanolind Oil & Gas Co. of Tulsa, subsidiary of Standard Oil of Indiana. Standard of Indiana wanted Yount-Lee to assure an adequate supply of crude oil for the Texas refineries of another subsidiary, Pan American Petroleum & Transport. So Lawyer Morrow sold the physical assets of Yount-Lee Oil to Stanolind for $42,000,000, keeping real estate, notes and accounts receivable of approximately $4,000,000. He expects to make his profit on the largest cash deal in Texas history by liquidating these assets...