OIL IN NEW ZEALAND

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23088, 2 August 1940, Page 12

OIL IN NEW ZEALAND

TO THE EDITOR 07 THE PRESS. Sir, —In your pacer to-day there ap- ; peared several letters on the au-im-portant question of developing our oil resources in New Zealand. There is an, agitation to work the shale deposits in Southland, and as a last resort this is good; but -there .is evidence on every hand that oil fields are just' waiting to be tapped in New Zealand, and. until these are explored, it would be foolish to spend money on costly / machinery to extract oil from shale. Hie Hon. P. C. Webb, as Minister for Mines, has done wonderful work, and even at this moment the most powerful drills in the world are boring into the bowels of the earth at Taranaki and Gisborne, and oil may be gushing up that way very soon. More important still, is the persistent rumour the last few days that New Zea’ahd Oil Concessions, which holds the licence over this area, has, in conjuhc--tion with a major American oil-boring company, arranged to exploit and drill the Kotuku area; wher- the largest oil seepages in New Zealand are to be found. The vast oilfields of the world have been found as the result of seepages of oil. and it is not beyond the; limit of possibilities that 12,000,000 tons of oil .can be piped from this oil- - field - , just as it is done at Baku, where the precious golden fluid is brought to the oil tankers through over 600 miles of pipes. It is on record that when some shallow bores were put down at Kotuku some years ago the pressure at( 300" feet was so great that ‘all the boring apparatus was blown .clear into the air. 'and r the bore had to 1 be abandoned, although oil was coming up at the rate of 80 gallons in 12 hours. One can just nicture'what would have been the result if the powerful drills, costing nearly. £200,000, which. are, in. use to-day. had been used to push that hole down to where the real oil lies. To me the prospects of finding real oily wells in New Zealand are very bright.-? Yours. etc.. ' - N.Z. OIL. J k uly 23. 1940.