OIL-BORING STOPPED IN SUSSEX

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23332, 26 October 1937, Page 12

OIL-BORING STOPPED IN SUSSEX

3506 FEET IN VAIN The Anglo-American Oil Company has abandoned an attempt to find oil at Hellingly, in Sussex, and is moving its 325 tons of machinery to Dalkeith, in Scotland. It has leased land belonging to Lord Lothian, about two miles from Dalkeith, and about 100 yards from an old well drilled in 1919, from which a few barrels of crude oil were produced. Drilling is expected to start there at an early date. The Hellingly bore, which was the company’s first attempt to find oil in Britain, was officially set in motion by Lord Apsley on June 4. The site, on Grove Hill, had been chosen because it lay on a geological anticline or, less technically, a wrinkle, into which the crude oil formed by the decomposition of marine plants and animals might have been drained and trapped. It was similar to oil-bearing formations in other parts of the world. When the bore had reached 3450 ft it left the Jurassic sedimentary strata and reached the old continental floor, known as the carboniferus. It also left the anticline, and in consequence it was considered useless to continue it below a depth of 3506 ft. The disappearance of the anticline was no surprise to the company, since such “ unconformability ” of successive strata is by no means unknown in oil-boring, and it will not be necessary to redraw the geological map of the district. But the presence of natural gas 10 miles away at Heathfield, v/hich partly determined the company’s choice of location, can only be described as a natural freak, also not without parallel in other parts of the world. All the machinery will be dismantled and a “ plug ” of cement placed in the well, so that soon there will be no visible record of the attempt to find oil in East Sussex.