Page:The Mexican Problem (1917).djvu/95

Rh two to three thousand feet deep. The porosity of oil sand is fourteen per cent, and those wells do not average two hundred barrels a day.

Yet there are no oil sands in Mexico. About two thousand feet below the level of the sea the oil drills strike the bed of ancient oceans and from coral reefs with sixty per cent of porosity spurt the greatest oil wells in the world. No pipe line yet constructed has been able to receive the full measure of one of these gushers.

South of Cerro Azul is the great Potrero oil well of the Mexican Eagle or English company. It gives the entire forty thousand barrels per day that this company can export on present shipping facilities, but this is not half its capacity. Lord Cowdray is giving his whole time to his country at the head of the British aviation department, so essential on land and sea in winning the war, and his pipe lines and refineries work automatically on this coast. When the war is over this field may compete for his great organization and engineering talent.

Above to the north, near the terminus of the Mexican Petroleum Company's railroad at San Geronimo, on the borders of the Tamiahua