In any consideration of the status of exploration of the oil industry today we are bound to look to history. The industry has always been pursued by the ghost of scarcity one day and the specter of overwhelming surplus the next. Part of this has been due to the sudden opening of new areas for exploration and part of it to the introduction of new methods of exploration, all of which has made available new supplies. Politics also affected the supply of crude.

Today we face surpluses in most areas of the world and the problem of these surpluses has afflicted us with a pessimism that has reached into our training schools for geologists and petroleum engineers. Such a mood makes it imperative that we glance at the future.

First we must remember that present world proved reserves of oil, producible at present costs, run in the neighborhood of 275 billion barrels, and that there is probably in sight 500 billion barrels. This is in contrast to Pratt's estimate of 77½ billion barrels made 10 years ago. Present world demand is close to 7 billion barrels per annum and is doubling every 11 years. This means that we have proved more than 20 years of supply. These figures would look very different, however, if it were not for the restriction of automotive use in the Communist countries. If all the world consumed oil a the same per capita rate as the United States, the demand would be 50 billion barrels a year and we would have about 5 years of supply in sight. We should, therefore, in our long-run interest keep on looking. This raises the question of how well we have explored the world.

It is probably a maxim that every generation believes it knows the limit of world resources. This is largely self-delusion. The next barrel of oil (or ton of copper, if you prefer) is always the hardest to find. But ingenious minds develop new methods which are successful, or bold spirits invade new areas. We drill deeper holes, we refine our means of gathering data. We venture

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to sea and we today have no idea of the limit to which those explorations will carry us. Three maps are presented showing prospective areas of the world: first one, dated 1944, was prepared by the foreign division of P.A.W.; second one is from "Geography of Petroleum," 1950, by Wallace Pratt and Dorothy Good; third one is speaker's own interpretation of the data available today.

The first conclusion from all this is that the exploration of the world has just begun. The second conclusion is that instead of slackening our geological, geophysical, and engineering programs, we shall be wise to increase them and to develop wider and better training programs with particular emphasis on technical excellence.

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