According to this report, Rumania is the only feasible source to ill in this deficiency, byt it was pointed out that Rumania also supplies the neighbouring Balkans and Italy. Should Italy enter the war. Rumania could not possibly supply all of German and Italian requirements, even if its shipments to all other countries were cut off. From this the report concluded that Italy was likely to remain out of the war until it had assured itself of necessary oil supplies from other than Rumanian sources. On the assumption of Italian ce-operation with Germany, it stated, this meant in effect control of the Near Eastern oil supplies, an extremely if not utterly unlikely possibility, The data compiled showed foreign military consumption of oil, including oil possibly used to add to reserve stocks, was 168,000,000 barrels in 1939, or 11,000,000 barrels more than in 1938.
The effect of the war so far has been to decrease civil consumption in the belligerent countries and to increase it in neighbouring neutral countries. Civil consumption in Germany and the United Kingdom, for example, showed an aggregate decrease of some 7,400,000 barrels. Meanwhile in Italy, Holland Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Belgium, consumption has increase an aggregate of nearly 4,000,000 barrels.—Havas.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.