OIL IN ENGLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 25471, 30 April 1945, Page 4

OIL IN ENGLAND.

The fact that Britain is dependent on her ability to guard her seaways is nowhere shown more clearly than in the maintenance of her oil supplies. In the British Empire there is no really outstanding source of .petroleum, and when Burma and Borneo were lost to Japan there remained only India and Trinidad of any importance. It is well that Britain had relied on resources outside the Empire and that the imports from Venezuela had for some years formed the bulk of her supplies. The information- released a short time ago that a measure- of success had attended the search for oil in England would 001110 as a surprise, and also as a considerable relief to those who appreciated even a small addition to internal resources. We are reminded of the gravity of the situation in 1918 and the exploration wprk then done. The story of its subsequent development is told briefly in the report of a paper considered at a meeting of the Geological Society of London last December. Britain had been divided into four regions for a boring programme which was begun in 19.16." Efforts in Hampshire were unsuccessful, in Yorkshire! and in Scotland natural -gas 'was discovered, and

shortly before the outbreak of war oil itself in Lancashire and in the county of Nottingham. The latter supplies were evidently considered to bo superior, and drilling and exploration were concentrated on them during the war. In live years the total amount of oil produced was something over .'IOO,OOO tons, a small figure relatively, but an amount described as a " notahlo contribution to the war effort." Apart from the vital fact that oil was struck in the very heart of tlie British Commonwealth when it was needed most, and the tochuical aspects of the dis"over.ies which can be appreciated, only by the trained geologists, there are some interesting sidelights or by-pro-ducts of the investigation which will have a wider interest. First there is the fact of the vory successful combination of geophysical exploration and technical apparatus to discover and bring into operation "an oilfield of significant size" in a country which was certainly not regarded as a likely oil producer of importance. For Australia and New Zealand the implications are to a certain extent encouraging; success may yet attend the more extensive and intensive search which will be possible after the war. In the Commonwealth high scientific authors ties have urged that priority should bo tfiven to this task as one of great national importance, and the same might surely bo said of the Dominion. Two other facts revealed during the investigations in England are proonhlv as interesting to the layman as to tho experts. One is that deep drilling proved the existence of a considerable extension in England's coal resources in the Lincoln area, and the other that tho great potash basin of Germany evidently extends beneath tlie sea to Yorkshire. Whether these deposits could ever be used to play tho part in British agriculture and the chemical industry that tho main basin has done in Germany is quite another matter. Their commercial exploitation might be expensive, and the German monopoly before the Great War has been broken down, by, tho large supplies discovered in (Russia, the United States, and Palestine. _ The really absorbing consideration is that in a country so small as England, the pioneer country in the modern use of the earth's resources, discoveries of great significance can still be made. England for the first tima 7 used native oil, but the.by-product of knowledge gained was " not less vital in the interests of the nation." !