1942 - Energy

Energy

Japanese paratroops land in mid-February on Sumatra's oil refineries outside Palembang and quickly take over wells for use by the Imperial Navy, keeping the Dutch and British from disabling production facilities.

Attorney General Thurman Arnold brings charges of criminal conspiracy in March against Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, accusing the company of having covertly supplied Germany's I. G. Farben chemical colossus with proprietary information related to synthetic-rubber production. President William S. Farish pleads no contest, pays a $5,000 fine (Jersey Standard and several subsidiaries are also fined $5,000 each), and agrees to stop hiding from the United States certain patents for artificial rubber that Jersey Standard has provided to Farben since 1933. (Standard has also been providing gasoline and tetraethyl lead to fuel U-boats and the Lüftwaffe.) Standard's chairman Walter C. Teagle announces his retirement November 21; Farish dies of a heart attack at Milbrook, N.Y., November 29 at age 61.

Clinton, Iowa-born Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey chemical engineer Donald L. (Lewis) Campbell, 38, and three associates come up with a cheaper, more efficient way to "crack" hydrocarbons into smaller molecules and thereby increase the ability to produce aviation fuel (and synthetic rubber) from a fixed amount of crude oil (see Houdry process, 1936). Owners of the Houdry patent have demanded $50 million for use of their process, Standard Oil engineers have tried without success to duplicate it, but Campbell, Homer Z. Martin, Eger V. Murphree, and Charles W. Tyson find that a powdered catalyst mixed with air or oil vapor behaves just like a fluid, creating a chemical reaction as it moves through the raw petroleum; carbon in the hydrocarbon attaches to the catalyst in a steady and continuous breaking-up process that allows a 6,000 percent increase in U.S. output of aviation fuel; within 60 years fluid catalytic cracking will be used in refineries worldwide that produce nearly 500 million gallons of gasoline per day.

Washington orders nationwide U.S. gasoline rationing in September, chiefly to reduce rubber consumption. Rationing has begun in May on the East Coast, where U-boat sinkings have reduced tanker shipments, but more than 200 congressmen have requested and received X stickers entitling them to unlimited supplies of gasoline. All U.S. motorists are assigned A, B, or C stickers as of December 1. Those with A stickers are allowed four gallons per week, this will later be reduced to three gallons, but nearly half of all motorists obtain B or C stickers that entitle them to supplementary rations because their driving is essential to the war effort, or public health, or for similar reasons. Truckers receive T stickers permitting them unlimited amounts of gasoline or diesel fuel, but pleasure driving is banned and a 35-mile-per-hour speed limit established on highways.