SHALE OIL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 143, 14 December 1938, Page 10

SHALE OIL

THE NEWNES FIELD

PRODUCTION IN YEAR'S TIME

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, December.2.

Within 12 months the Newnes shale oil industry will be employing 3,500 persons. National Oil Pty., Ltd., has undertaken to start production by January 1, 1940, subject to a penalty of £16,000 if it fails to fulfil the undertaking. ,

"This cdndition," said the Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Mr. J. N. Lawson, this week, "wi^l be fulfilled much earlier than the agreement stipulates. Plans and' specifications for the Esthonian retorts capable of an output of 300 tons a day will be available in December, and tenders will be called immediately \ for their construction. A considerable part of the retorts will probably be manufactured in Australia, and orders haVe already been placed in America for cracking ahd polymerising equipment to cost £40,000."

The metropolitan distribution centre for petrol will be at Blacktown, near Parramatta, where the company has bought 57 acres of land." From this site a petrol pipe line 102 miles long has been surveyed to the Capertee Valley. A junction in this pipe line at Newnes, Junction Will enable the company to serve the western area of New South Wales. Eighty men are already employed on the works, and long before production commences, several hundred men will be engaged on the field.