t --I Conducted by EDMUND DANGERFIELD. (- f Editor: EDWARD SHRAPNEI,L
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SMITH. The Problem o Fuel Supply. The second number of this journal, dated the 23rd March,. iyos, contained an article entitled " Will supplies of petroleum spirit last?" and the favourable estimates then put forward by its writer—a world-reputed authority—have been amply fulfilled.. The interval, however, has witnessed periods of uncertainty. High prices, tco, were, incidentally,. if not for prolonged terms, necessarily imposed upon users of vehicles with internal-combustion engines, and it is not going too far to state that sales of machines were impeded,. ;a least during certain months of the years 1905 and 1906, by the nervousness of both motor manufacturers and would-be purchasers of petrol vans and l.L:Tries. We, at that time, did all in our power to afford importing interests an opportunity to make public their position and intentions. For example,. we may point to the lengthy interview* with one of the most prominent men who had intimate associations with the Royal Dutch, Rothschild, and Shell programmes—Mr. H. W. A. Deterding. The wholesale prices, at that date (January,. 1906), had recently been advanced by an alarming percentage, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers was officially perturbed at the outlook. The considered and deliberate an-• nouncement of a preparedness to make three-year contracts. at 7+d. per gallon ex store London did not allay a feeling which well-nigh ran into panic, notwithstanding the obvious guarantees which were thus proffered, and many were the head-shakings over the enormities of the " oil kings." Looking back upon those days of hesitancy, and with the comforting knowledge that petrol-storage tanks are full to repletion the country over, it does not worry us much to. admit that the sinking of a single tank steamer would, at a certain date in the year 1906, have meant petrol at 2S. a gallon to the ordinary consumer, and the stoppage of nearly all the petrol omnibuses in London for at least three weeks—so closely had demand approached the obtaining limits of supply.
In this year of grace, after the several leading groups of: financiers have fulfilled their promises to bring more and, new spirit forward, it is merely holding up the glass to. Facts as they are to record a repetition of the cycle upon which Mr. Deterding dwelt in the course of the interview to. which we have alluded earlier : supply has, yet once again, proved its ability to overtake demand. The use of the heavier-gravity spirits, say, 0.740 to 0.760 for commercial. vehicles, and o.7oo to 0.715 for private vehicles, in place of the 1903 fetish of o.68o spirit, has contributed enormously to this solution, but that is not the whole story. New fields have been brought within the range of transport, new methods of fractionating have rendered suitable certain sources of supply for whose yield the market had no place in 1905, and better storage and distributing facilities have had their effect on this side.
It is wrong to suppose that the leaders of the great American oompanies have been idle in this matter : no error could be grosser. All eyes, it is true, have been turned eastwards,, whether to the Near or to the Far East, and those who control the destinies of the Standard Company have not been late in getting there. They have, contemporaneously with the actions of other huge oil groups, disclosed and developed their possessions in both hemispheres, and of what account is it that the American Continent can fully absorb its own
— productions? Trade must be retained, and capital which runs into millions will generally devise a means both to hold and to gain. Hence do we find the Anglo-American combination to the fore with ample supplies of " Pratt's," though the importers of the "Shell" brand (British Petroleum Company) have apparently been more active and successful, to date, in the world of commercial motoring. We are satisfied to know that the days of fearfulness on the score of dear spirit are over. Nature, in her bounty, provides the best safeguard ; alternative fuels—paraffin already, and producer gas in the near future—provide the second. A prospect of any permanent increase in the prices of spirit must foster others, but we discern neither such a prospect, nor the occasion for its anticipation.