America's petroleum industries pour out fuel and lubricants for the United Nations. Oil well derricks on the beach along the coast of the U.S. Pacific coast state of California indicate how thorough is the search for oil which has been going on in America for more than eighty years. Some beach wells are drilled straight down to reach oil deposits, but others are drilled at an angle so that oil is being pumped from locations far under the sea. Sometimes the bottom of the well is a quarter mile or half mile from the shore, while surf washes the foundations of the steel tower on which the drilling or pumping machinery is placed. The thoroughness and efficiency of the U.S. oil industry in finding new oil deposits accounts for the enormous supplies produced in America for the modern machines of war. In 1944 according to a U.S. oil company official, the predictable U.S. crude oil total will reach 1,601,250,000 barrels.

Photographed in 1944 on 5x7 negative. Photographer Unknown.