OIL RESERVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 136, 10 June 1936, Page 6

OIL RESERVES.

UNDERGROUND STORES. (To the Editor.) Last August you were good enough to print a, note of mine on the importance nowadays, when international good relations are liable to be broken at very ehori notice, of keeping one's main oil supplies underground, as a very elementary safety precaution, and I see in one of your recent issues, that of the 21st ult., that the London "Daily Telegraph" has the same remark to make about the naval base at Singapore, where at present the oil storee arc all" above ground. This lends to confirm the impression that the average Britisher, whether colonial or otherwise, and whether at Home or in the Dominions, is constitutionally incapable of visualising anything more than two yards in front of his nose. Of what o-ood are batteries of anti-aircraft and other ordnance when all your oil reserves can be sent sky high in a split second by a single shell from a ship 20 miles or more away? In my note of last August I suggested Mount Eden as an eminently suitable and central location for underground oil stores, especially as only horizontal tunnelling would be necessary But, of course, it is no use locking the stable door after the horse is stolen, or trustin" to a benign Providence that international affairs may never render such precautions necessary, "as it would lie too late to take action should events suddenly make their necessity obvious. Under pi-pent world conditions safe storage of petrol reserves is of much more practical importance than the buildiu" of harbour bridges, and, in this case, would also, of course, help to solve the local unemployment problem very considerably. HUGH M. CLOSE.