SEARCH FOR OIL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1925, Page 7

SEARCH FOR OIL

AUSTRALIAN METHODS

SUBSIDY INSTEAD OF BONUS.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

BTDNEY, 21st August.

For over six years the Commonwealth Government has offered a reward of £50,000 to the first person or company discovering a commercially profitable oilfield in Australia. Such a field was never discovered, and the reward is still in the Treasury. The reward method of encouraging oil prospecting haß always had its opponents, and acting on the advice of Dr. Arthur Wade, the expert engaged by the Commonwealth to examine the possibilities of finding oil, the Government has decided to withdraw its offer of a reward and to authorise the expends ture of a similar sum to subsidise boring in three States on a £ for £ basis.

In New South Wales the Federal Government is prepared to subsidise boring either by the State Government or a private company on a site known as Belford Dome in the Hunter River valley to the extent of £22,500, On a similar basis the Ministry will spend a similar sum in Western Australia, the site of the bores there to be in the Fitzroy area and in the vicinity known as Price's Creek. Regarding Queensland, the Ministry is prepared to join the State on a £ for £ basis up to £5000 from the Commonwealth to enable a thorough and detailed geological survey to be made of the area in the vicinity of Longreach, Blackall, and Ruthven. Dr. Wade has discarded the other three States—"Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia—aa likely oil producer*. Consequently the Government, acting on this advice, has decided that it would not be justified in incurring expenditure in these areas.

Just as this decision was being announced, Dr. Wade was at Perth on his way to England. In an interiview Dr. Wade said: "I give some hope for finding oil in the Kimberley district, and there is hope, especially for natural gas, in Queensland. There may be jus£ a chance that there is some gas to be found in parts of New South Wales, but this will require some further detailed work." Dr. Wade criticised prospecting methods. He said that although he admired many of the prospectors with whom he had come in touch, they did not know enough about the job in hand. "The difficulty," he declared, "is to put oilfield conditions in the mind of a man who has never seen and studied an oiiftejd. The result of lack of training is that a lot of time is wasted, and money too, to some extent. What is wanted h more detailed geological survey work."