Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/683

 668 INDIAN FUEL PROBLEM and transport. If our coal deposits do not fail us, and India's coal out-turn and railway rates could be adjusted so as to mininise the cost o! transport o! coal by land, it is permissible to presume that the normal increase in demand will be met therefrom. As regards the fnture o! petroleum, it would be rash to hazard any surmise. Liquid obvious advantage and it would predicate a larger utilization of production of India is barely fuel has great and be only natural to it,, Bnt the entire 2 per cent of the world's supply, and the bnlk of the oil. sources is controlled by those great monopolistic organizations o! the West, which have virtnally that power to dictate the prices at which oil should be sold all over the world. And our oil-wells are not inexhanstible, and it is doubtful if new oil-areas within India can be dis- covered, as a set-off to those which are exhansted.  And the experience o! the recent war shehid make any country chary of trusing so vital a thing as power-generation to the chances o! external (and possibly hostile) conrol. This aspect of the matter should not be lost sight o! in any scheme o! national fuel-economy, and mnst warn us against believing ourselves capable o! becoming substantially less de- pendent on our firewood resources. The manufacture o! charcoal in our forests is now carried out in a primitive fashion, and as railway freights are calculated on bulk as well as on weight, the increasing cos at which charcoal could--with the existing methods o! production--be supplied in owns should be viewed as a national question, especially if it would mean the needless destruction o! firewood. In I See the Industrial Commisslon's Report: paragraphs 48 and 96. In 190 the output of petroleum in Indies was 118 millio: gallons, and he yesfly outpot steadily rose to 977 millinn gallons in 1915. In 191-t she production fell to 959 million gallons, and though the oupu bgs sinoe recovered it bas only been by very deep bmlngs tha the recovery h been pss:.ble. See Records of the Geol. Survey of India, vol. 45, pp. 172-5, vol. 43, pp. 161 and vol. 48, p. 51.