GREAT BRITISH OILFIELD.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 251, 22 October 1919, Page 9

GREAT BRITISH OILFIELD.

VAST POSSIBILITIES FOB THE NEW " BLACK COUNTRY." A ROMANCE OF SHALE. One of the greatest discoveries of any age has been made in Norfolk, says a "Daily Chronicle" correspondent. South of the old seaport of King' 6 Lynn there exists an oilfield richer than any coalfield in these islands, and extending over an area of probably 150 square miles. This flat country, now occupied with farms and market gardene and private' parka will in the next few years become a great industrial centre, perhaps the greatest in England. It will be a Black Country without any smoke. For oil fuel is practically smokeless, and oil fuel will drive thel great industries to be established here. I The oil underlies this part of Norfolk' in thick beds of shale. This shale has' as it were, soaked up the oil, and when, the shale is mined and put into a retort: the oil comes out. In some cases from! three tons of shale you will get one ton of oil. (NORFOLK'S FIRST MINE. The first mine ever put down in Norfolk ie now sending such shale to the surface. As it is dumped near the pit mouth it looks like rather hard black clay with a distinct smell of mineral oil. It is evidently the remains of a great marine deposit, because ammonites, oysters and other sea creatures are found in it in great numbers. Some of the ammonites are of enormous size. The ammonite was a shell fish that lived perhaps 40,000.000 years ago, and the ancestor of the modern nautilus. One of the ammonites found at West Winch, where the mine just mentioned is situate, measured five feet across and nearly a foot and a-half in thickness. Dr. \S. A. 'Forbes-Leslie, a geologist who has studied these shales for a dozen years past, says it is the largest he has ever come across or heard of. BORIS. FOR LIQUID OIL. Beside* the oil which has saturated the shale, there seems to be a large quantity left over which the shale has not Im-cii able so to speak, to soak up. In nearly a score of boreholes put down by English Oilfields, Ltd., this oil is frequently met with. The drilling tools are brought to tlie surface coated with it. At two or three of the boreholes it has begun to flow, and there is little doubt that when it is properly drilled for it will be found in considerable quantities. This liquid oil appears totally different from that which is being got in Derby-1 shire. The colour is different, the smell 1 is different, and the characteristics ofi the two oils are totally dissimilar. The 1 beet-informed scientists prefer to call the Derbyshire oil petroleum, and the Norfolk oil shale oil. HEAT, LIGHT, AND LUBRICATION. However, whatever name we give this oil, there is no doubt that it is of high commercial value. From it can lie obtained various drugs as well as motor spirit, paraffin oil for lamps, lubricating oils, naval fuel oil, and wax for candles. It will easily be understood that the extracting of the crude oil from the shale, and the manufacturing from the oil of all the different products just re- 1 ferred to, will create a vast new industry if carried out on any scale. -4t the mine at West Winch, which, as already stated, ist the first mine ever sunk in Norfolk, .50 tons of shale per daywill be raised. A few hundred yards distant will be sunk another shaft, with a similar output. Thus from these two shafts 1,000 tons of shale per day will be obtained. If this shale is of average richness, as Norfolk shales go, we may expect from 80.000 to 100,000 .tons of oil to be obtainable from the output of these two shafts. EMPLOYMENT FOR MANY MEN. In the total area there is room not merely for two shafts, but for 200. With an output of something over 200,000 tons of shale oil per annum the Scottish shale industry hais been employing some -25,000 workers. It will be seen that when the Norfolk oil shale ludustry is In, full development many times that number will be employed there. Besides a hundred or two mining shaft.*, there should be retorting works for extracting the oil from the shaie, refineries for extracting the various products from the oil, brick works using Norfolk clay to manufacture millions.of brickis for the various factories and the villages which will spring up about them, and glass works using oil fuel to manufacture glass out of the splendid silica deposits which are a feature of this area. And in spite of all this industry and commercial activity there will be hardly any smoke.