ABSTRACT
Economic cooperation administration (ECA) is able to carry out its program at a considerable saving to the United States taxpayer largely as a result of two factors: the decline in Middle East crude oil prices and the easing supply situation. As a matter of fact, United States exports of petroleum to ECA countries in 1948 declined by nearly 40 percent compared to 1947, while petroleum exports from the United States to all other countries declined only 8 percent. Most of that investment was made with the intention of finding new sources of oil to supply Eastern Hemisphere requirements. There are reasons to believe that, at the moment at least, investments to supply Western Hemisphere oil requirements could be made more profitably in the Western Hemisphere than in the Eastern Hemisphere. Western Hemisphere crude oil was still moving into Europe, but the flow was declining and was counterbalanced by somewhat larger Middle East crude-oil shipments into the Western Hemisphere.
