Legal Planning of Petroleum Production: Two Years of Proration

Abstract

PRORATION of production of the major mid-continental oil pools in the United States has now been in general operation for well over two years. By proration the oil-producing states, acting through administrative commissions, have set production quotas for each pool as a whole and allocated these quotas among the variously owned wells within the pools. During the early part of this period, the daily output of crude was slashed from some 2,500,000 to approximately 2,100,000 barrels -the overhanging weight of vast immediate potential production was largely lifted from the market -the "statistical position" of the industry was further improved by the withdrawal of some 70,000,000 barrels of stocks from storage -and the price of the product soared more than 500% from a dead low of a few cents to slightly over one dollar per barrel.