OIL IN NEW GUINEA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23302, 21 September 1937, Page 6

OIL IN NEW GUINEA

EXISTENCE ESTABLISHED TESTING WORK IN PROGRESS (Special to Daily Times) AUCKLAND, Sept. 20. “ The oil belt that runs through the East Indies, Sumatra, and Borneo has now been definitely traced to New Guinea, and whether there is oil there in payable commercial quantities, there is certainly every prospect of increasingly numerous discoveries of it both in Papua and in the mandated territory of New Guinea,” said Mr J. Ward Williams, an American explorer and mining engineer, who was a through passenger by the Mariposa from Sydney after leading an expedition into the unexplored country between the Fly and Sepik Rivers. He said that the best possibilities seemed to him to be outside the present oil-bearing operations on defined concession areas where exploratory work had been going on for some time.

Five companies were busily pushing ahead with preliminary work, Mr Williams said, and although nothing definite had yet been obtained the geographical and geophysical work had been almost completed. and one company had started drilling. He thought it had excellent prospects, but the outlook was even better in those parts outside these companies’ concessions. Sir Williams led his expedition into the interior mainly to find new gold deposits, but he said that although there were a number of smaller ones, he thought the Bulolo field was the only really valuable one in the country. His experience had caused him to believe that there would not be another. In oil, however, the future was much brighter, if it was established that the oil which was undoubtedly there existed in payable quantities.