OIL FROM COAL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17146, 31 December 1929, Page 8

OIL FROM COAL

USE OF BY-PRODUCT^ ATTENTION IN AUSTRALIA SYDNEY, Dec. 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 CessnockGreta seam, and of establishing a secondary industry in the coalmining industry for the extraction, by the latest processes, of oil and its residues for fertiliser, j Both the Federal and State Governments have, promised to investigate tho possibilities of this new industry, as otio 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 of Mines in the Lang Labor Government, investigated tbejie by-pro-duct processes abroad, say they aro convinced that the position demands immediate action. Something, it is urged, will certainly have (jp'be done to give the industry a new outlook, for, apart from the present, crisis, it has suffered, since 1914, no fewer than 4500 strikes of one sort and another, involving the loss of more than e.OCO.CCO working days. It is said 'by those advocating the fullest use of the State's by-product coal that the genius of German research and organisation will make if possible for that country, by (he Use of these processes, to be independent of American or other oil supplies within the next fen years. And that, it is observed, is a country without any natural oil supplies. Germany, it is stilted, 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 flovernmonts should take a hand in it. Tested for oil in London, coal from the Ccssnoek-Orota seam is said to have yielded excellent, results.