Oil ‘revolutionized’ warfare, says 90-year-old oil exec

Petroleum revolutionized the way countries waged war during World War II, changing everything from transportation to communication, Paul Hilliard, president of Badger Oil Corp.
Hilliard, 90, was the guest speaker Feb. 16 during the Atchafalaya Chapter of the American Petroleum Institute meeting at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
Hilliard’s presentation was titled “Petroleum in World War II: The Lifeblood of Modern Warfare.”
He joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943, and, in 1959 founded Badger Oil Corp. in Lafayette.
While the National World War II Museum’s mission statement is to tell the story of the “war that that changed the world,” Hilliard told the story of the “oil that changed the war that changed the world.”
Hilliard reads a lot of history, including “great books on World War II,” he said.
But, “you can’t find the word oil, petroleum or fuel in the index. It’s as if it’s just oxygen,” Hilliard said.
Warfare transitioned from coal power to oil power in the 20th century because of the “energy density and portability of oil,” which changed the world more than most revolutions in history have, Hilliard said.
Oil changed transportation, communication, refrigeration, packaging, agriculture “and about anything you can think of,” he said.
World War II brought about, for the first time, a third dimension of warfare — the aircraft.
“And it changed the whole story,” Hilliard said.
No longer could nations only conduct land or naval warfare.
The American oil industry played a “vital” and “indispensable role” in supplying 6 billion of the 7 billion gallons of oil the Allies used in World War II, he said.
“Given the advent of the oil age, it’s more than a little bit ironic that the two nations that launched World War II had no oil,” Hilliard said.
Germany’s nearest oil was 1,000 miles away, so the Germans took coal and converted it into oil, he said. Japan had no indigenous oil source with the nearest oil 3,000 miles away.
During the Battle of the Bulge, in mid-December 1944, Allied armies were “gearing up for the push into Germany,” Hilliard said. The Allies had built “huge reserves,” particularly of gasoline, he said.
In Belgium, Allied forces built large fuel dumps totaling about 2.5 million gallons of gasoline, he said.
German troops were looking for gasoline so U.S. troops put 100,000 gallons of gasoline in a ditch and set the gasoline cans on fire, Hilliard said. German forces then came within 1,000 feet of the largest fuel dump in Europe and didn’t know it and didn’t find it, he said.
If German forces had found the U.S. fuel dump in Belgium, the Germans might’ve won that battle, Hilliard said.
Japan started a war by attacking Pearl Harbor, but the country had to go capture oil to fight the war, Hilliard said. The U.S. was the source of 85 percent of Japan’s oil.
At Pearl Harbor, Japan missed capturing a U.S. oil dump of 4.5 million barrels, Hilliard said.
During the war, Japan saved their torpedoes to attack U.S. warships only and didn’t go after oil tankers or merchant ships, he said.
“They went to war over oil, but they didn’t do anything to destroy ours,” Hilliard said.