considerable damage was done to the fields in order to prevent their being of immediate use to the enemy. The wells were seriously damaged, and the State refinery at Drohobitz was partially dismantled, while immense reserves of refined oil stocks were burned. The Galician oil industry has for years attracted the attention of foreign capitalists, for the highly remunerative nature of petroleum exploitation is generally appreciated. Prior to the European war German capital was very largely interested in the Galician industry, and the majority of Allied companies had Germans as their local representatives, but all this is now changed, and in the future Allied capital will be considerably increased. The Premier Company is the largest English concern in the Galician fields. GERMANY has made great endeavours in the past to institute a petroleum industry of its own, but no great success has been recorded, for while it does possess several oil-producing areas, these are only small fields, with a very limited yield of heavy petroleums. The wells, though producing for many years steadily, do not give forth those large quantities of petroleum so characteristic of the best wells in other petroleum-producing fields, and flowing wells are indeed very rare. Germany, therefore, has to look to imported petroleum for its large demands. In a succeeding chapter I refer at length to those oil regions which come within the limits of a chapter, “Petroleum in the British Empire”: there is no need at the moment to make reference to them here. Space does not permit my even briefly touching upon the many other oil regions of the world which are now being successfully operated; it is certain, however, as time goes on that their number will be materially increased. CHAPTER III HOW PETROLEUM IS PRODUCED