really encouraging to the oil trade, and to holders of stocks 
in petroleum concerns. The Standard Oil Company of Cali- 
fornia is quite sure that the period of over-production of 
oil is passing, and says that “we seem to be on the threshold 
of another phase. Production is falling. Shipments to the 
Atlantic coast and elsewhere are about half what they were 
last July. The demand for petroleum is good, consumption 
great, and the large daily surplus production of crude oil 
that existed less than a year ago has disappeared. Supply 
and demand are approximately in balance. Barring the 
discovery of prolific new fields, therefore, the industry in 
California must again draw on its reserve stocks.”" 
Pointing out that the oil business is one of feast and 
famine, and of great transitions and changes, differing in 
these respects from most other industries, the bulletin of 
the company emphasizes the additional fact that the source 
of supply of crude oil is constantly shifting. 
“Fields of oil are found, are developed,” it says, “the 
volume of production ascends and then dwindles. New 
fields, in other States, even in other countries, take the 
place of the old. There is no certainty about it at all, either 
as to the location of new fields or as to the volume of the 
oil. Each time a new field is found, the industry must build, 
quickly, facilities for handling the new oil—new pipe lines, 
new tanks and reservoirs, often new refineries, at the new 
points of output. This has happened over and over again 
in the history of oil. To meet these situations and emer- 
gencies requires great resources by way of organized per- 
sonnel. and lots of readv monev *’ 
In July, 1928, the surplus over the normal demand of 
California refineries for petroleum reached the remarkable 
total of 401,000 barrels a day. Of this, 207,000 barrels were 
shipped to the Atlantic Coast, and elsewhere, through the 
Panama Canal, and 194,000 barrels a day were put into 
storage in California. This continued into the present year, 
until the tanks of California now hold about 97,000,000 
barrels of oil.