PETROL SUPPLIES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 1, 26 September 1939, Page 6

PETROL SUPPLIES

Search For Oilfields In New Zealand

HEAVY IMPORTS MADE

Not far short of 2,000,000 gallons of petrol a week is required to meet New Zealand’s, normal needs. About 90 per cent, of this amount is for motor transport. In 1937, the last year covered by the 1939 New Zealand Year Book, the* total consumption „of petrol was 89,450,000 gallons—of which 82,111,000 was used by motor-vohicles. Since then, with the rapid advance in motor-car registrations, the total is known to have increased considerably, till a figure of 100,000,000 gallons a year is considered a reasonable estimate. AVhen the petrol restrictions were announced, a correspondent wrote to a Christchurch newspaper suggesting that the restrictions were of vital importance to the oilfields in the Dominion. “AVhy is it that Taranaki and Kotuku are not being bored when it is well known that oil exists in both these places?” he asked. The Mines Statement recently tabled in the House of Representatives by the Minister for Mines, Mr. Webb, gave figures of production for 'both Kotuku and Taranaki. For 1938, the Nos. 1, 2 and 4 wells of Moturoa Oilfields, at Taranaki, have produced 116,585 gallons of crude petroleum oil, and from the Kotuku oilfields had been produced 1269 gallons. However, since recent legislation a new era in the search for oil seeined likely in the Dominion, said the report. Licences for on aggregate of 9236 square miles of potential oil-bearing laud had been applied for and the search for oil had been begun on a scale unprecedented in New Zealand’s history. Production of Car Fuel.

These figures, however, show that on the 193 S .production, New Zealand’s present oil wells produce only a little more than one two-hundredth part of tbe Dominion’s supply—and their production is crude oil, not refined petrol. There are other ways of producing car fuel used in the Dominion —one used in a small way by gas companies of extracting it from coal —and others include new fuels altogether, such as “mobile gas,” for which engines have to be converted. One company has recently been formed to exploit this latter source of transportation. There have, however, in recent years been no big-scale attempts to develop coal carbonization—though the Government has had expert reports prepared on costs and possibilities—or to begin again the full use of shale oilfields.