OIL SEARCH IN PAPUA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19882, 8 March 1939, Page 5

OIL SEARCH IN PAPUA

NO SUCCESS YET UNFOUNDED RUMOURS SYDNEY, Feb. 25. Dr. E. A. Briggs, assistant professor of zoology at Sydney University, said yesterday that both gravitational and geophysical surveys had so far failed to prove the presence of oil in commercial quantities in Papua. Rumours that oil had been tapped in payable quantities in the Dutch section of New (Guinea were still unsubstantiated. Dr. Briggs, who returned to Sydney in the Tasman after a holiday in the East Indies, said that many Dutch and American oil experts had gone to Papua in the last year, and big planes were being used for geophysical surveys. During his stay in the Netherlands Indies, Dr Briggs found that the Dutch were anxious to deal with the problem of Japanese penetration into Dutch New Guinea. They were no longer prepared to grant concessions to the Japanese, who had leased areas in the north for cotton-growing. ’

“Japanese entomologists have succeeded in controlling the pink boll weevil, which previously attacked the cotton,” he said. “Cotton is now being grown successfully in the Japanese area.”