Drilling for Dollars: The Making of US Petroleum Reserve Estimates, 1921-25

Radically different petroleum reserve estimates were made in the United States between 1921 and 1925. In 1921 a joint committee composed of representatives from the United States Geological Survey and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists claimed that the United States petroleum reserves would last for only eighteen to twenty years. Four years later the oil industry trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, announced that America possessed a nearly infinite supply of oil. Why were these estimates so different? This paper places each estimate in its institutional and economic context and argues that the great variance in the figures was caused by the different goals and interests of the groups that made the estimates.