Oil Can Lose the War

Allied experts who once boasted that oil would win the war began to realize last week that the oil may get into the wrong hands. It was a rude awakening.

Before Pearl Harbor the U.S. and Britain's fleets drew on the vast oil fields of the Western Hemisphere. Soviet Russia and the Armies of the Middle East had Baku and Batum. Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore were next door to the Dutch East Indies. The anti-Axis powers of the world controlled 97.5% of world production. It was as simple as that.

But the Japanese have closed the United Nations' filling station in the far Pacific. Adolf Hitler, if he drives into the Middle East, may capture Baku and Batum. Then the Axis would not only have oil enough for its war machine (after destroyed mills and refineries are repaired), but would force the United Nations into complete dependence on the Western Hemisphere.

Oil there is in the Western Hemisphere aplenty: last year's production was 1,761,951,000 barrels, 78% of world production. But nearly 7,000 miles of water -a four months' round trip for a fast tanker -lie between San Francisco and Melbourne. India's port of Calcutta is 16,425 miles from San Francisco. It is 4,673 miles from New York to Archangel. And all these trips will require some convoying.

Last week the Navy Department's count of tankers lost in the western Atlantic since Dec. 7 reached 17, an average of six a month. Although tanker production during 1941 was only 15 ships, 1942-43 calls for 215 new vessels, an average of 18 a month. But even these promising figures could not overcome the chill fact that the onetime Allied trump card, oil, was no longer a trump. The submarines that smacked shells at the refineries of Aruba and California were probing for vital or gans, for these refineries produce high-octane aviation gasoline, of which the hemisphere has none too much. Grumped the New York Herald Tribune's old Columnist Mark Sullivan: "It is by far the greatest problem of transportation and supply -what experts call 'logistics' -ever faced by any nation at war."

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