Observations on WWI Petrol Octane

[Bletchley]

This is a rather delayed response to a thread of this title by KACEY that is now closed, so I cannot 'bump' it and add to it any more, but it is here: http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/ai...-part-1-a.html

Allies: Floating to Victory on a Tide of Oil

At a meeting of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference after the end of the war, in December 1918, British Cabinet member Lord Curzon claimed that the Allies had "floated to victory on a tide of oil." Although Germany and the Central Powers had struggled to find adequate supplies of fuel oil and gasoline throughout the war for an increasingly mechanised army and expanding air force, the British and French forces opposing them on the Western Front had never been in any serious danger of running short of either, quantitatively or qualitatively, despite German U-boat sinkings in the Atlantic and elsewhere. It is true that tanker ship sinkings, together with a huge rise in military mechanisation and demand for gasoline led to a temporary hiatus in Entente distribution capacity at the end of 1916, which in turn led to some domestic restrictions and much political concern (particularly amongst the French, who were the least prepared to meet this sudden increase in demand) that strategic sources of oil might become insufficient. But the US entry into the war, domestic restrictions, and a re-organisation of the Allied supply and distribution system meant that, by the signing of the Armistice, Curzon could claim that the stocks of oil in Allied countries had been "brought up to a point of absolute safety", an achievement that "reflected the greatest credit on the Petroleum Council and on the great oil companies that had subordinated their own interests to the Allied cause."

French problems in mid to late 1917 stemmed largely from a lack of mechanisation before the war, a corresponding lack of an oil producing or refining infrastructure, and a consequent failure to grasp the importance of gasoline supply and distribution to an increasingly mechanised army and a hugely expanding air force until it was almost too late. Whilst American, German, English and Dutch oil companies established a series of port installations, refineries, and depots before the war for the import of fuel from company owned oil fields, France, sheltering behind its tarif barriers, had only a loose association of small distributing companies that imported refined or semi-refined oil, mostly from the US, in foreign owned tankers for onward distribution by barge through the French river network. At the outbreak of the war, total French oil consumption was some 400,000 tons annually, the bulk of this being heavy fuel oil for industrial and naval use. By comparison the French air force alone, by 1918, was consuming 110,000 tons of aviation gasoline a year. By early 1917 the French army and air force was entirely dependent on the British Shell company for 100% of its aviation fuel and much of its motor gasoline, and whilst the British flying corps laid claim to the best grade of fuel from Sumatra, the French had to make up for any shortfall with a suposedly second-grade 'Light Borneo' gasoline from the Kalimantan oil fields. In May 1917 Henri Berenger, Rapporteur to the French Senate Army Committee, warned of a looming transportation crisis due to difficiencies in the French distribution system, and the French Government responded in July of 1917 by forming a Comite Generale du Petrole, with Berenger as Chairman, to negotiate a better deal with Britain through the new Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference. French aviation fuel needs were by now being estimated at 10,000 tons a month, and the French Chambre Syndicale de l'Industrie du Petrole claimed, rather dramatically, that they would run out within the next three months unless something was done. When this failed to impress their British allies, the French Premier Clemenceau sent an appeal to the US in December 1917, warning of an impending paralysis of the French armed forces and requesting immediate shipment of 100,000 tons of gasoline in US tankers directly to French ports (thus bypassing the 'pool' system, controlled by Shell and the other British oil companies). This request was met, and with the entry of the US into the war supplies of US aviation gasoline now made inroads into the Shell company's monopoly of the supply and distribution of Allied aviation fuel - although the US "X" (or Export) grade aviation fuel, although it was light enough to meet all aviation fuel specifications, was paraffinic and low in aromatics, and therefore had a tendancy to detonate and produce slightly less power in the higher compression Allied aero engines then coming into use. Whilst the British continued to use their more aromatic Shell aviation fuels from the Dutch East Indies, a fuel that would support these higher compression ratios, the French air force was forced by distribution difficulties and politics into an ever greater dependence on US supplies of this 'inferior' "X" Grade 'Export' and 'Fighter' grade fuel that the US forces were themselves now using in France.

The British supply of aviation fuel was dominated and controlled largely by one company throughout the war - the Anglo-Dutch Shell group of companies, which was 60% Dutch and 40% British. Within this group of companies, the British owned Shell Transportation company controlled the distribution of fuel (and owned abput 50% of the world's tanker fleet), whilst the Royal Dutch Shell company exploited the Shell oil fields in the Dutch East Indies and had a controlling interest in the Romanian oil fields via a majority share-holding in the Romanian 'Astra' Oil Company. The Shell group also had substantial holdings in Russian oil production. In 1914 the Group faced some minor competition from two other British companies: the Burmah oil company, a Scottish oil company established originally to exploit the Scottish shale oil resources but then expanded into Burma; and the Anglo-Persian oil company established to exploit the newly discovered oil resources of Persia (Iran), Turkey (Iraq) and the Near East. Both these latter companies had, by 1914, contracts with the Admiralty to supply heavy fuel oil to new British oil-fired naval cruisers, but were not a serious competitor at that time in the British or European motor gasoline and aviation fuel markets. The best aviation fuels at this time were regarded as the light gasoline fractions from straight-run distillations of crude oil, with quality measured by the specific gravity and volatility of the fuel, and some of the best oil fields for this 'light' gasoline were to be found in Sumatra (in the Dutch East Indies), and in the oil fields of Romania. These were all owned or controlled by the Shell group, although in quantitative terms the Group accounted for little more than 5% or 6% of world oil production. The US was by far the largest world oil producer, accounting for about 65% of world production, but it exported mostly heavy fuel oil and kerosene for industrial and domestic use, and gasoline for motor vehicles. Russia, the second largest world producer (16% of world production in 1914) exported predominantly heavy fuel oil, whilst the Austro-Hungarian oil fields in Galicia (around 2% of world production) were mostly producing fuel oil, kerosene and heavier gasoline for themselves and for export to Germany. The US gasoline exports to Europe were controlled largely by the giant US Standard Oil (New Jersey) company, and were the main competitors to Shell in the pre-war European motor gasoline market. There was also some minor competition to Shell from a small association of companies promoting benzol, an alternative motor fuel produced from coal as a by-product of the coking process used in steel manufacturing.

Bletchley

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