SEARCH FOR OIL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 7 April 1934, Page 2

SEARCH FOR OIL

AREAS IN AUSTRALIA early development URGED In a luncheon address Sydney business men lasi week Mr E. L. Waller. managing' director of Oil, Search, Limited, said that no greater service could iie rendered to Australia than to free it from the shackles by which it was bound by dependence on oversea oil imports. ’“lt is a service,” he said, ‘■'which can be rendered also the Empire, if this country can supply not onlv its own oil needs, but also is able to meet in part the needs of the rest of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”

The Empire consumed 30 per cent of the world’s production of oil, he said, yet not 3 per cent was produced within the. Empire. Britain had lost the dominance held by her world-flung coal possession since the introduction of the combustion engine. In 1930—admittedly a peak year —Australia consumed more than 400,000,000 gallons of oil and oil products. More than £lO,000,000 was sent out of Australia that year to pay for those oil imports. Translated into the terms o' primary products, that oil was paid for by the wool from more than 50,000,000 or by 80,000,000 bushels of wheat. The 40,000,000 gallons consumed must have cost the consumer something like £40,000,000 sterling. The 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, was chaotic; little or no encouragement was given to the search for oil in Australia; in fact, the scientific work necessary to follow the procedure adopted in oil-producing countries was in some States impossible owing to the locking up of large areas held by position-seekers. Oil had been found in at least one of the sedimentary basins of West Australia. What was being done to reveal the 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. v ln*the Roma district of Queensland more 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 cn a site giving the necessary geological requirements of closed structure. Thus, oil supplies in commercial quantities could not have been forthcoming. In tlio Mandated Territory of New Guinea quantities of oil had been produced from seepages in th e Matapau district.