OIL FAILURES

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 147, 22 June 1923, Page 4

OIL FAILURES

There is more in a brief cable message about oil bores in Scotland that we published yesterday than meets the eye. Tt was stated /or the. Government in the. House of Commons that £50,000 per bore had been spent in Scotland, and that £30 worth of oil had been obtained. Naturally the. Government does not think it worth while to go on with the search. But. this is not the whole of the State's enterprise in this direction. A

few years ago high hopes were raised that oil was present in large quantities under the soil of Derbyshire, where, under the direction of Lord Cowdray, who has immense oil interests, and with the consent of the Government, several bores were put down. Lord Cowdray and his American oil experts were confident of sucrose, and English people had visions of a great new industry springing up in the Midlands. At the outset they weTe warned by two English geologists, one of whom is one of tho most eminent in the country, that the quest was hopelefp, and those warnings have been justified. The finding of oil was announced, but only infinitesimal quantities have been struck, and to-day 'ho machinery has been removed from all the Derbyshire plants but one, and there the pros-' poets are declared to be worthless. Operations are also going on in one or two other places, but apparently with no more likelihood of success. What has been found has been -not oil deposits in the ordinary sense, but thin deposits of crude petroleum produced by the distillation of coal measures. Lord Cowdray paid the preliminary expenses of the Derbyshire boring, but the enterprise is estimated to have cost the Government half a million. It is curious how in all countries men are ready to be confident about oil on slender evidence. On our own Canterbury Plains a company financed a bore on prospects that in most other kinds of enterprise would have been considered too thin to risk capital on, and lost all its money. The failures in Scotland and England mean the end of hopes that Britain will be able to supplement her imports with home supplies. She will remain dependent on oversea wells for a fuel that is becoming more vital to her existence.