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<br />growth of the different sources. However, there is a sharp contrast <br />behveen the individual growth rates registered during the past and these <br />estimates of the future. This difference, a very significant one, is to be <br />found in the fact that the growth rates for oil, natural gas, and bituminous <br />coal estimated for the future are not nearly as far apart as those experi- <br />enced in the past. Thus, between 1920 and 1955, and between 1940 and <br />1955 when oil and natural gas expanded rapidly, bituminous coal ex- <br />perienced absolute declines in tonnage, while between 1955 and 1975 <br />bituminous coal is estimated to grow substantially, and by a rate only <br />about J 5 per cent below that for oil and about 35 per cent below that <br />(or natural gas. <br /> <br />- Results of research dealing with one aspect of energy supply prospects <br />were issued separately during the year as a book published by The Johns <br />Hopkins Press, The Future Supply 01 Oil and Gas, by Bruce C. Netschert, <br />considers the energy components crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas <br />liquids, and inquires into their availability in the United States in the <br />period through 197 S. The book, which stirred considerable interest <br />because of its bearing on current policy issues, has been reprinted. <br />In his analysis l\ilr. Netschert presents a systematic review of all <br />recent estimates of reserves and resources, the techniques used in deriving <br />them, and the assumptions and definitions upon which they are based. <br />He appraises them in terms of their relevance to the problem of long-run <br />supply prospects, and in the light of the advances in technology which may <br />be expected over the next twenty years. Finally he recasts them in terms <br />of a new concept-that of the "resource base" for the United States and <br />adjacent continental shelf-which is free from current economic and tech- <br />nological limitations usually implied in oil and gas reSOurce estimates. <br />Netschert's resource base estimates are on the order of 500 billion barrels <br />of oil and J ,200 trmion cubic feet for natural gas. These include great <br />quantities of resources which are, as yet, undiscovered. \Vhether they <br />will ever be found depends in part on the advance of technology~ and in <br />part on future movements in oil costs and prices. <br />Not all of the difference, however, between proved reserves of oil and <br />the estimated resource base consists of resources which have yet to be <br />discovered. More than 200 billion barrels of the difference (which is about <br />six times the proved reserves of oil in 1957) consists of discovered re- <br />sources which cannot be recovered by current techniques and at current <br />costs and prices and are, therefore, not included in proved reserve figures. <br />There is a strong possibility that so-called secondary recovery technology <br />and practice, in which initially unrecoverable oil is flushed from the <br />reservoir rock, will undergo important advances during this period and <br />will playa large part in facilitating increases in domestic oil production <br />drawn from these previously unrecoverable resources. <br /> <br />" <br /> <br />30 <br />