Oil investment a risk-—-Professor

Press, 27 September 1983, Page 18

Oil investment a risk-—-Professor

PA Auckland A leading British scientist, Professor T. Stonier, yesterday warned New Zealanders not to invest in oil. Professor Stonier, professor of science and society at Bradford University, was a key speaker at the national computer conference. He left on Friday evening to attend an Australian science summit in Canberra.

“Everyone is going after oil right now, but it is a mistake. The price of oil is going to keep coming down. “They are very stormy waters out there, and it might be very expensive to

drill it out, when there is going to be an oil glut early in the next decade,” he said.

Professor Stonier said he based his prediction on the rapid drop in the price of solar energy. He said most large oil companies and big overseas electronics firms . such as Seimens in Germany and Westinghouse in the United States, were developing solar-powered products ranging from satellites to pocket calculators. Like the “chips” that were the basis of the latest microcomputer boom, solarpowered “photo-voltaic cells” were also made of

silicon, one of the most common elements in the Earth’s crust.

“Once it gets going, you could see a tenfold reduction in price every five years in solar power, just as you have in microchips,” said Professor Stonier.

“When the price of oil drops, there will be less research money being spent on it.

“Nevertheless, it is so far along that one can predict quite confidently that by the end of the decade it will start biting, and early in the 1990 s that will make the price of oil drop significantly,” he said.