Petroleum Spirit Supplies.
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Users of commercial motors are necessarily interested in both the visible and future sources of fuel for internal combustion engines. The subject is one which appeals, in the first place, to companies engaged in the operation of motor omnibuses and other public service vehicles, but its bearing upon the whole range of mechanical road transport is too vital to be ignored. Alcohol will, in our opinion, be a negligible factor in the matter : its price per horse-power hour must be prohibitive, as compared with the costs for other available fuels. We are reduced, as a matter of fact, to a practical choice between petroleum spirit and paraffin, because other suitable fuels are not available in sufficient quantity to contribute to a solution of the problem. Considerations based upon the world's supply of the lighter hydro-carbons have been before the eye of the motoring public for many years; but the points at issue are now fast approaching an acute stage. Everything hinges upon the considerations which are closely engaging the minds of different petroleum magnates, and the future rests almost entirely upon their decision in regard to the percentage return they will attempt to force out of consumers. We do not lw any means suggest that the motor industry is in the hands of a combination of monopolists, or that it can ever find itself permanently in so undesirable a situation; it is, on the contrary, in the hands of members of the motor industry themselves to determine the point beyond which they will not allow their companies and their customers to be squeezed. The undeveloped petroleum fields of the world are, subject to a reasonably large but not prohibitive capital expenditure upon transport to the coast and tank steamers for conveyance to Great Britain, waiting to be tapped. Large sums of money will, not unnaturally, be required for any such development of Nature's munificent yield, and why should an industry of the magnitude already attained in this country alone allow itself to be crippled for want of, let us say, three or four millions sterling of capital ? Should it be necessary to subscribe the largest amount we have named, which would call for a minimum annual payment of £200,000 as interest to the shareholders, we do not hesitate to assert that it would be put up without difficulty in a few weeks. Petroleum interests are, for the first time, confronted by a powerful combination : they stand face to face with influential and monied groups, which are both allied and possessed of the machinery for ensuring concerted action, which constitutes a striking contrast to the state in which countless thousands of individuals who burn lamp oil are found. It is true that paraffin goes up one penny or more per gallon when Mr. John Rockefeller and a few similar men nod in unison, and signs are not wanting that it will be sought to bring old practices to bear upon the motor industry in general. Success will not attend such an effort.
Slight upward movements in market prices have, of course, been caused by recent disturbances in the Baku and district oil fields, but slight variations of this character do not touch even the outside fringe of the development which was recently outlined by Mr. Henry Sturmey in our contemporary " The Motor." This gentleman, who is rightly regarded as the father of motor progress in England, has not, as is mistakenly supposed by some whose powers of observation are obviously meagre, wasted his time by drawing attention to the bare fact that supplies of petroleum spirit may fall short, or that alcohol may, under certain ideal conditions, prove a commercial substitute for it. He has struck a note in quite another quarter, which has already given rise to not a few indications of hearty response and appreciation. He has endeavoured to send home ID the country the fact that the gods help those who help themselves, and the conferences which are now taking place between the president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mr. Sidney Straker, and some of the largest petroleum spirit interests, in order to arrive at a guarantee of maximum price, can have only one result of two. Either the existing producers will give reasonable and substantial undertakings for the future, or the motor industry will take into its own hands the development of fresh sources of supply without delay. Were petroleum spirit to be advanced by only zd. per gallon, the extra expense attending the consumption for motor omnibuses in London alone dur. Mg the year too; would equal a 5 per cent, dividend on
/:2,(8)0,000. With the alternative of controlling its own supplies, and with increasing excellence in the construction and application of carburetters for hydro-carbons varying between 0.700 and 0.750 specify gravity, the cry that the internal combustion engine is threatened is the worst of idle tales ever invented to harass an industry.