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THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

Now the two pipe lines carrying oil are delivering seventy-five thousand barrels a day at the Tampico terminal, and sixty thousand barrels a day are being exported, along with more than one hundred thousand barrels of gasolene per month. Orders have just been given to burn oil at the pumping stations and the topping plant, releasing the third pipe line, which is now used as a gas line, so that it can be used to transport oil. This may bring the company's capacity for delivery at Tampico to above one hundred thousand barrels per day.

The engineering enterprise in the Mexican Petroleum Company resembles the history of our western railroad pioneers, who laid their rails on the prairies in advance of the settlers. The Mexican Petroleum people actually had the audacity to build railroads and pipe lines in advance of their wells and upon the basis only of the oil seepages.

A million and a half dollars went into the first pipe line and two million and a half dollars into the railroad and pipe lines to Cerro Azul, all in advance of any oil well.

When the great Casiano well came in, September 11, 1910, a million and a half barrels of oil had to be burned to keep it from the rivers,