SEEKING OIL

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 68, 17 September 1927, Page 9

SEEKING OIL

PROSPECTORS TO BE HELPED

Speaking at a function held yesterday afternoon to celebrate the arrival of the British Imperial Oil Company's new tanker Paua, the Minister of Marine (the Hon. G. J. Anderson) said that it had not yet been found possible to produce the cargo to fill the vessel in New Zealand. However, he and his officers had been at work for some months on a Bill to facilitate prospecting for oil in New Zealand. To-day it was rather, difficult to obtain all the rights necessary to prospect, but it was proposed to facilitate the work, and it was hoped that when that was done more capital would be put into prospecting operations. All the existing rights would be protected under tho Bill, which was intended primarily to encourage wider prospecting. Experience had shown that it was necessary to put down a good many bores to test a field thoroughly, and the speaker was satisfied that so far the tests had not been sufficiently comprehensive. "If I succeed in getting my Bill through—l am not going to tell you any of its provisions,'' continued the. Minister—"it will bo easier to prospect, but I want to say that whatever oil we have in New Zealand must be preserved for the British, Empire. We don't intend to allow foreigners to come here and exploit our fields." (Hear, hear.)