OTAGO SHALE DEPOSITS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28888, 7 May 1959, Page 16

OTAGO SHALE DEPOSITS

Swedish Company

Interested

(New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, May 6.

One of the world’s largest shale oil concerns—the Swedish Shale Oil Company—has offered to investigate in its laboratories the potential of Otago’s shale deposits. This offer was received today by the director of the Otago Development Council (Mr J. M. Elliotte) in a letter from the Swedish Minister in New Zealand (Mr F. Hugo Arnfast). The Minister said he had received a letter from the Swedish Shale Oil Company, which was exploiting shale oil in*Sweden. The company, he said, had noticed that the Otago Development Council was interested in the Nevis shale deposits. The company had had experience not only with Swedish shale but with shale problems in other countries, and it was convinced that the council would find some value in co-operating with it on the possible exploitation of the New Zealand deposits. The company would like to discuss the feasibility of such co-operation. Mr Elliotte said that the Nevis shale had already been tested on the council’s behalf by the Union Oil Company of California, which was also interested in the possible exploitation of the deposits, but he had written to Sweden providing the assay data already gathered, and he hoped the council would be able to send samples to Sweden to see what the Swedish company thought. When the council’s chairman (Sir Leonard Wright) was in the United States later this month he would discuss the oil shale project with the Americans. With two large concerns interested, Mr Elliotte said, he hoped that it might be possible to extract the oil at an economic figure. It was not a question of chemical processes, but of economics. If the real answer could be found it would be of immense benefit to New Zealand.