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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 30 > Issue 8 (1932)

 

Abstract

The present pressing need for controlling the production of oil is due to a variety of causes. The principal factors that have contributed to the existing situation to "the flood of oil that takes on the proportions of a national disaster'' are: (1) A rapid improvement in exploratory technique, geological and geophysical, which has resulted in "bringing in" too many new oil fields. (2) Enormous advances in the art of drilling, especially as regards rapidity of drilling and the depths attained. (3) Improved methods of refining which furnish an ever-increasing percentage of gasoline from. the crude. (4) The development of high-compression ·motors, reducing total gasoline consumption. (5) Inability of American producers to compete on the foreign markets, with the result that the export trade in oil is rapidly dying. And (6), perhaps the most important fact of all, the maladjustment of our legal principles to the nature of oil and gas and the methods of producing them. This maladjustment furnishes the occasion for the present paper which will deal with existing and proposed legislation controlling the production of oil.

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