Page:Mexico's dilemma.djvu/96

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
78
MEXICO'S DILEMMA

portant the protection by Pelaez and his band of bandits is. These figures, taken from the records of the United States consulate at Tampico as furnished to the State Department by Claude I. Dawson, the consul, show that during the first six months of last year 24,376,824 barrels of oil in all forms were exported.

An illuminating table follows on page 79.

This calculation, however, is far below the possible production of the Tampico fields. With the present equipment, pipe lines, pumping stations and wells the oil companies operating can produce as much as a million barrels of oil a day, but if any more oil were produced there would be no ships to carry it away. The submarine losses are felt in Tampico too.

A million barrels of oil every twenty-four hours—enough, seemingly, to fill the Hudson River, if the basin of that river off Manhattan Island ever went dry!

The largest producing companies in the Tampico district are El Aguila, the Mexican Eagle Company, belonging to Lord Cowdray, and the Huasteca Petroleum Company, founded by Mr. E. L. Doheny, of Los Angeles. These two corporations have the most wells and the largest wells, measured by daily capacity. Both companies have big camps in the oil jungle. At the Cowdray camp at Terra Armeria General Pelaez lives with his staff and soldiers. General Enriquez and his staff live at Juan Casiano, the big-