ROMANCE OF OIL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 2 July 1927, Page 14

ROMANCE OF OIL.

EARLY ■PRODUCTION.

FIRST WELL DRILLED IN 1559. Only seventy-five years ago the sale of petroleum products was practically comined to a few experimental medicinal preparations. A little later in the 19th century the manufacture of illuminating and lubricating oils commenced, and rapidly increased, but the lightest of all the distillates now known as petrol, was for years regarded as a waste product, of no importance, until the advent of the internalcorn bustion engine. Petroleum, from which petrol is derived, is found in many parts of the world, and many theories as to how it was initially formed have been argued by scientists. The pioneers of oil-drill-ing in Pennsylvania round about 1860 innocently believed to be indigenous to the valley of the Allegheny. Nowadays, the theory that has gained the most general .acceptance, is that petroleum was originally formed by the prolonged action of heat and pressure upon the remains of millions of small marine animals.

The first well actually to be drilled was one put down by Col. Drake at Oil Creek, West Pennsylvania in 1859, and from that time until 1875 this oil-field spread vapidly, and was the only one oi any importance in the United States. Lixe many of the pioneers of tne oil industry, Drake lailed to benexit tinancialiy ‘from his enterprise, and actually died a state pensioner, alter many years of poverty-

Similar fates befell Shaw, the Canadian driller, who started the boom at Oil Springs, Van Syckel, the originator of the first successrul pipe-line for conveying the petroleum products, and -Merrill, a pioneer cherruist, who laid the foundations of successful refining. Doctor James Young, who initiated the Scottish Shale-oil industry in 1847, is an exception to this rule, as he died one of the wealthiest men in Scotland.

Since these early days the history ol oil production has been eventful with romance, appalling disasters, such as the great fire at Baku and oil wars between the big companies concerned in its production. Petroleum has been known and used for thousands of years, however. In its asphaltic form it was employed as a mortar for the bricks which went to the building of Babylon and by the Greek and Roman architects, for a thousand years or more crude petroleum has been burnt in India, and hundreds of years ago oil was being produced in the Caucasus on a commercial basis. It is related that on on© occasion in Persia, Alexander the Great was entertained by the sudden illumination produced by the ignition of a train of petroleum laid along a city street, combustion bein initiated by a torch—not a sparking-plug. British chemists had much to do with the development of processes for treating crude petroleum, and to British shipbuilders on the Tyne-side must go the credit of being the first to develop the tanker, specially designed for the transport of oil in bulk across the seaes. For over forty years file building and running of tankers was exclusively in British hands.

It is interesting to record that the word “petrol” is in reality a coined commercial term somewhat akin to “kodak” as applied to cameras The originator of the word was Mr F. R. Simms, and it was originally applied to the prducts or (Messrs Carless, Capel and Leonard, England, who were the pioneer suppliers of petrol in that country.

Nowadays, oil wells are sunk by percussion or .by rotary drilling to depths of thousands of feet down to the oil-bearing strata, and the petroleum is either pumped up or may gush out under tne pressure of natural gases. It is a viscid fluid, varying from light brown to a greenish-black in colour, and consists essentially of a great variety of hydro-carbon compounds together with a, certain proportion of impurities. The treatment which the crude petroleum undergoes consists of two distinct processes—distillation and refining.