OIL FROM COAL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20906, 21 December 1929, Page 21

OIL FROM COAL.

UTILISATION OF BY-PRODUCTS,

IMPROVING OUTLOOK OF INDUSTRY.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 12.

The coal crisis in the northern field of New South Wales has served to revive the question of exploiting and utilising the by-product coal in the rich Cessnock-Greta seam, and of establishing a secondary industry in the coal mining industry for the extraction, by the latest processes, of oil and its residues for fertiliser. Both the Federal and State Governments have promised to investigate the possibilities of this new industry, as one means of'putting new life into a field which has been in the- throes of industrial turmoil since about 1914. ‘Men, however, like Mr J. M. Baddeley, who, as Minister for Mines in the Lang Labour Government, investigated these by-product processes abroad, arc convinced that the position demands im-mediate-action.

Something will certainly have to be done to give the industry a new outlook, for, apart from the present crisis, it has suffered, since 1914, no fewer than 4500 of one sort and another, involving the loss of more than 8,000,000 working days. It is said by those advocating the fullest use of the Stated byproduct of coal that the genius of German research and organisation will make it possible for that country, by the use of these processes, to be independent of American or other oil supplies within the next ten years. And that, it is observed, is a country without any natural oil supplies. Germany, it is stated, has so established this industry as to be in a position to send some of its fertiliser—the residue of the coal oil—even to New Zealand. Private enterprise proposes to exploit this new field in New South Wales, but it is contended that the Federal and State Governments should take a hand in it. Tested for oil in London, coal from the Cessnock-Greta seam is said to have yielded excellent results.