New Angle on Search For Oil

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 41, 18 February 1939, Page 4

New Angle on Search For Oil

Artificial Earthquakes To Trace Suitable Ground AMERICAN EXPERT ARRIVES Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Last Night. Tho creation of artificial earthquakes in potential oil-brearing territories constitutes some of tho work to bo done in the Taranaki oil territory within the next three years by Mr. R. C. Clark, a physicist in the employ of the Standard 1 Oil Compaiy of America, who arrived !by the Monterey. He will have charge !of a scismological party that is t® arrive shortly to undertake surveys on the west coast of tho North Island.

Since he graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1927 Mr. Clark has specialised in this class of work and with teams of scientific earthquake makers he has traversed the oilfields of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and many other States. The experience he has gathered in his own country he will use in Taranaki on behalf of the New Zealand Petroleum. Company, Limited, and within a short time he and his crew of 36 men will begin operations. The general idea behind the aeisrnological work to be done was the staging of miniature earthquakes by the

setting off of small charges of dynamit'd at various depths, he explained. The vibrations set up by the concussions travelled through the earth and were reflected from certain formations, such, as limestone, and recorded on special equipment used for that precise purpose. Data gathered in this way enabled him to say what geological structures lay beneath the ground surface and to determine their locations. This was an essential part of modern prospecting methods, since there must be some form of geological structure forming reservoirs for oil accumulations.

' Drilling for oil had ceased to be a haphazard process, he continued. Definite technique had been laid down as the result of almost unceasing experiments and the principle to be followed in Taranaki would be in accord with that practiced abroad. So far as he knew his party would be the first of the kind in the Dominion.

“In no sense do we discover oil,** Mr. Clark concluded. 44 We merely locate subterranean structures favourable to an accumulation of oil. As soon as the appratus arrives from the United States next month we shall ge* to work.”