CHAPTER X
PIONEER WORK FINISHED
The expansion of the Mexican Petroleum Company in its beginnings was by land acquisition. Such expansion may now be considered as ended. Some people figure that more than three-quarters of the oil values in this Mexican field are under the Mexican Petroleum Company's six hundred and twenty thousand acres and that they represent a potentiality of at least five billion barrels in production, a sum ten times the world's annual consumption. But no man can set limits or boundaries upon this oil territory.
Doheny truthfully says, "Geology is a joke in Mexico; values are where you find them. . . ." And Doheny has led in finding values both in California and Mexico.
His first purchases in Mexico were in August, 1900, although prospecting was begun by Doheny and Canfield in the May and June preceding. They were American pioneer inventors and soon found a cheaper method of prospect-
