"Sources of fuel for British oil fired ships in WW1" Topic

Ran across an interesting claim yesterday – to the effect that 75pct of the oil fuel used by the Royal Navy in WW1 came out of Mexico! Does anyone have any insights or further detail on this point?

B

They had a refinery & Oil field in Basra in modern Iraq. Save guarding it was there reason for invading Mesopotamia.

And there were extensive British owned oilfields in Persia (which were refined at Basra).

Now, there may well have been some imports of naval fuel oil from elsewhere, but I seriously doubt 75%…

75pct of the oil fuel used by the Royal Navy in WW1 came out of Mexico

Now, there may well have been some imports of naval fuel oil from elsewhere, but I seriously doubt 75%…

Especially since the Mexican oil fields were not developed that early.

Haven't found much, but this might be useful background for you:

link

From the US side of the pond, the shortage of fuel oil was the reason that the USN squadron which joined the Grand Fleet was coal-powered. The newest US super-dreadnoughts at the time (Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Arizona) were oil-fired.
BWW

The brief (but somewhat contradictory) homework I have had an opportunity to do indicates that the great majority of fuel oil delivered to the UK appear to have come from the USA (about 85%) with a small fraction (4%) originating from the Vera Cruz fields in Mexico. The tricky bit, however, is that the Mexican fields were under the control of US owners.

However, other statements suggest that, by 1917, Great Britain was receiving more than enough oil out of the Mideast fields alone.

More homework necessary …

B

OK. Homework done.
Pre-WW1 British planning estimated a requirement for the navy of approximately 11-13 million tons of fuel oil in the event of war. Procurement planning anticipated the following sourcing arrangements -

100,000t/yr ex Scottish shale oil production
100,000t/yr ex Rangoon (Burma)
150,000t/yr ex Persia (after 1913/1914)

Remaining requirements were to be obtained from -
80pct – Gulf of Mexico (excluding Texas)
10pct – Black Sea
10pct – Borneo

The Mexican oil was to come from the British controlled Mexican Eagle Oil Company, owned by Weetman Pearson (Lord Cowdray), which had made a massive oil strike in 1910 in the Vera Cruz/Tampico region (100,000 bbls per day output) and had on-site refining capability.

9,100,000t of fuel oil were ultimately delivered to the RN during WW1 – somewhat less than pre-war predictions. Of this amount, only 1,231,000t (about 1/8th of naval consumption) came out of Persia over the four war years. Persian oil was found to be of unsuitable viscosity and flashpoint for use in a cold climate and was therefore primarily used to support operations in the warmer climates of the Mediterranean and Middle East.

In 1916, the RN held a war reserve equal to one year's operational consumption. By 1917, deliveries were averaging about 135,000 tons per month, with about 110,000 tons originating from Central and North America. Nevertheless, starting in Spring of 1916, consumption surpassed delivery to the extent that, by early 1917, the naval reserve had dwindled down to 3-4 months and the RN was forced to materially curtail operations. The shortage also afflicted the British Army with its 60,000 trucks and 22,000 aircraft, to the extent that the RN was forced to surrender one month's worth of its fuel oil reserve to sustain land operations on the Western Front.

This oil crisis was finally resolved by the entry of the US into the war. The US was far and away the largest producer of oil in the world, but it was actually the large American merchant tanker fleet (and the introduction of the trans-Atlantic convoy system) that resolved "the great oil crisis". Availability of oil itself had never really been the problem; it was the chronic insufficiency of British tanker carrying capacity to physically transport the oil to Great Britain that proved to be the bottleneck.

All in all, a very interesting topic.

B

Very interesting. Still, the RN's initial request upon us entry beyond destroyers was for coal fired battleships rather than coal due to concerns over their ability to supply any additional oil fueled battleships at that point in 1917. (At least according to Massie's research).

Tis true. An oil supply crisis did arise in the UK during 1917 due to the enormous increase in fuel requirements for the Western Front, where the BEF's transport park had expanded to 50,000+ internal combustion powered vehicles. The RN was obliged to transfer considerable quantities of oil from its fleet fuel reserve in order to support the BEF's land operations, to the extent that RN operations in the North Sea were purposely curtailed as an economy measure.

The US was requested to provide only coal-fired battleships in order not the exacerbate the existing oil shortage (Great Britain had a huge domestic coal supply). The entry of the US, with its large merchant tanker fleet, ultimately resolved the oil problem.

B