WHEN COAL AND OIL END.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 307, 27 December 1924, Page 4

WHEN COAL AND OIL END.

DEEP MINES PROJECTED. TO OBTAIN HEAT FOR POWER. ITALIAN EXPERIMENT. What will happen vrncn Hie earth runs short of coal and oil supplies? This problem was discussed by Professor W. \V. Walts in a paper on "Geology in the Service of Han,"' recently. To-day, in spite of improved technical knowledge, he said, there remains many areas where difficulties met in working have not yet been surmounted, while there will be in the future ample scope for improved methods and inventions to deal with coal at greater depths than those at "Tvhich it can be at present economically worked. "There is room for much new and more precise study than has yet been devoted to the variation of coal seams; elaborate sampling and new means of testing have still to be put into practice before we can say we are making a justifiable and economic use of the capital reserves stored up in the rocks." Living in Good Times. Of oil Professor Watts declared: — "The whole world is being searched to prolong the good times we live in; but, in spite of the fact that there probably still remains a recoverable percentage in the oil-producing areas, and that there must be new fields awaiting discovery, there are already signs that the high oil mark has been reached, if not passed. "But, again, it is no small comfort that, although our supply of native oil, easily won and easily refined and applied, cannot last very much longer, there are abundant supplies of oil shale still left, sufficient to take its place for many decades to come." He instanced the possibility of a great new power which humanity may harness to its service—nothing less than heat of the earth's nether regions. Power From Heat. A beginning has been made at Volterra, in Italy, where there has been found "a new source of power in the high-temperature steam from fumaroles which had previously been used only as a source of borax. "Now the steam is being tapped, by boring adventurously carried out, and its chief heat is employed in running great power stations. "This may be but the beginning of the application of a new and valuable source of power in which the services of geology will be required, and from which that science stands to learn much. "We are haunted by the fear that a limit will be imposed by high temperature to deep mining, while that very heat may provide energy as valuable as the material which would otherwise be mined; just as we dread the gas from certain coal seams when gas might, if it could be exploited, give a return equivalent to that of the coal itself."