SEARCH FOR OIL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 94, 4 April 1934, Page 4

SEARCH FOR OIL

Areas in Australia EARLY DEVELOPMENT URGED In a luncheon address to Sydney business men last week, Mr. E. L. Walter, managing director of Oil Search, Limited, said that no greater service could be rendered to Australia than to free it from the shackles by which it was bound by dependence on oversea oil imports. “It is a service, he said, “which can be rendered also to the Empire, if this country can supply not only its own oil needs, but also is able to meet in part the needs of the rest of the British Commonwealth of Nations.” Tho Empire consumed 30 per cent, of the world’s production of oil, be said, yet not 3 per cent, was produced within the Empire Britain had lost the dominance held by her world-flung coal possessions since the introduction of tho combustion engine. In .1930—admittedly a peak year—Australia consumed more than 400,000,000 gallons of oil and oil products. More than £10,000,000 was sent out of Australia that year to pay for those oil imports. Translated into the terms of primary products, that oil was paid for by the wool from more than 50,000,000 sheep, or by 80,000,000 bushels of wheat. The 400,000,000 gallons consumed must have cost the consumers something like £40,000,000 sterling. Tho total cheque Australia received from her wool clip that year was about £34,000,000. “What has Australia done?” asked Mr. Walter. The oil ordinances of the States, he said, were chaotic; little or no encouragement was given to the search for oil in Australia; in fact, the scientific work necessary to follow the i procedure adopted in oil-producing countries was in some States impossible owing to tho locking up of large areas held by position-seekers. Oil had been found in at least one of the sedimentary basins of Western Australia, What was being done to reveal tho great promise of this known oil horizon? More than 70,000 gallons of oil had been produced from a number of bores put. down in Victoria. These were all more or less mechanical failures because of the want of scientific direction and the requisite knowledge of oil technique. Ju the Roma district of Queensland mere than 3000 gallons of free oil and 30,000 gallons of petrol from gas had been produced. It had been proved that not one bore put down in that oil-bearing district was i on a site giving the necessary geological requirements of closed structure.. Thus, oil supplies in commercial quanii- : ties could not have been forthcoming. In the Mandated Territory of New I Guinea quantities of oil had been pro-1 (faced from xoepagos in the Mntupau 1 ■lietrirt '