OIL DEVELOPMENT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16838, 29 December 1928, Page 5

OIL DEVELOPMENT

T.O.F. OPERATIONS STEADY PROGRESS MADE Steady progress has been made with the drilling of the bore at Mangaone, where the laranaki Oilfields, Ltd., proprietary hopes to tap the oil pool which geologists are convinced lies some thousands of feet below the surface of the ground. The bore is now down about iOOOft, and a fairly strong now oi -gas has been registered'from the bore, indicating that the drilling is justified so far as it has gone. The Morere well has been sealed for tho present, pending ihe further development of the Mangaone bore. An item of interest in connection with the Taranaki Oilfields' Ltd. operations is the impending development of a new area in tho South Island, where prospecting warrants have been secured, and a preliminary investigation made, showing oil seepages to bo present in considerable aggregate volume. Some of tho machinery from tho Waiapu No. 2 well at Tokoniaru Bay, which is now being dismantled, probably will be erected on the new area. A pressman to-day inspected a phial of apparently excellent crude oil, collected from one of the seepages in the South Island prospecting site, the sample being one which the company's officers no doubt would like to match with something similar from the Mangaone bore. It is recognised, of course, that seepages do not indicate definitely the presence of a huge body of oil that can be developed commercially, but they leave no doubt of the presence of at least some oil; and since the_ task of locating the pools of oil whicli become payable assets is carried on largely upon a system of deduction, it is satisfactory, from the company's point of view to have certain evidence of the existence of some supplies within a given area.