PETROLEUM DEPOSITS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 15 June 1928, Page 5

PETROLEUM DEPOSITS

IN OMATA DISTRICT.

AN ENCOURAGING REPORT. GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) NEW PLYMOUTH, June 15. Six months ago Coal Oil (N.Z), Ltd., a Sydney company, engaged a party of geophysicists to investigate petroleum deposits in this district. The results of the half-year’s work have now been communicated by Mr. McGeachie, managing director of the company. The survey so for has resulted in locating about 400 acres containing extensive commercial crude oil accumulations west of Paritutu in the Omata district,, the locality favoured for boring by Professor Wanner, of Bonn University, in 1911, and urgently recommended for detailed' geophysical investigation by the Swiss -petrologist Dr. Bossard, and Dr. Krahmann, of the Berlin Mining Academy. The most exhaustive investigation clearly indicates large unbroken oil accumulations, the original seat of which was in tertiary layers, whence the oil has worked its way by volcanic movements and earth pressure to secondary layers at a convenient depth located by the survey. Here large and unbroken, accumulations will be encountered, and weaker oil horizons will probably be met in the higher strata. Whether areas east- of Paritutu are equally favoured is still a problem only soluble by geophysical investigation, which will he continued for six months before investigating holdings at Waipatiki and in the Gisborne district, which meapwhile are being geologically surveyed by Dr. Bossard. The New Plymouth discoveries, Mr. McGeacliie says, can be safely regarded as having finally established the existence of crude oil in extensive commercial quantities, and the seepages prove that it is of. extraordinarily rich quality. The discovery heralds a great new industry in New Zealand, and assures. l future economic independence of the Dominion and Australia in respect of petroleum oils.