Oil Futures

ACCORDING TO ''The Prize," Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 history of the oil industry, the dawning of the automotive age was a time of deep pessimism about America's oil supply. World War I had just ended and few new fields had been discovered. Crude was in such short supply that some refineries were running at half capacity. ''Leading geologists," wrote Yergin, ''prophesied gloomily that the limits on US production were near."

Instead, the fear of shortage and the resulting rise of oil prices spurred the use of experimental prospecting techniques. The use of seismographs, aerial photography, improved drilling technology, and specialized inventions like the torsion balance and the magnetometer ushered in a new era of oil exploration, and the 1920s saw a rush of major American oil finds.

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