Difficult To Judge Oil Fields—B.H.P.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 21

Difficult To Judge Oil Fields—B.H.P.

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

SYDNEY, March 13. It had not been possible for operators to make “any reasonable predictions” of the oil production potential of the Marlin Field off the Victorian coast, the managing director of the Broken Hill Company Proprietary, Ltd. (Sir lan McLellan) said today.

He was addressing the initial session of I the sixth annual Australian Petroleum Ex- ' ploration Association conference in Sydney.

F Sir lan McLellan Mid ' the difficulties of prediction were not as well i understood as they should be.

“Quite naturally the public and shareholders, in particular, are anxious for an up-to-date picture of exploration activities, and sometimes assumptions and predictions are made on inadequate data,” he said. First Hole “A rather typical example is our experience in the socalled Marlin Field where the first hole drilled gave good indications of oil but one hole does not make an oil field. “The two subsequent holes

drilled in this field have shown quite different results in the oil horizon and, up to the present, it has not been possible for us to make any reasonable predictions of the productability of the Marlin Field in regard to oil,” Sir lan McLellan said. This was the only reference made by the B.H.P. chief to the Esso-B.H.P. joint venture off the Victorian Coast Oil Role He spoke mainly on the relationship between the role of Australian private enterprise, overseas organisations and the Federal Government in the overall oil research programme. He said that of 70.8 million

dollars spent on petroleum exploration in Australia in 1965, 34.3 m dollars was provided by overseas organisations. Australian private enterprise provided a further 21.6 m dollars, the Government subsidy amounted to 10.4 m dollars and direct Government expenditure 4.5 m dollars. Huge Capital He said that in off-shore exploration there was a need for enormous resources of capital for drilling operations and mobilisation of equipment This, in itself, ensured maximum consideration of all other data prior to commitment Sir lan McLellan said the potential for further discoveries in the Australian area was good.