RICH DEPOSITS

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 78, 15 June 1928, Page 5

RICH DEPOSITS

t OIL IN TARANAKI GEOPHYSICIAL SURVEY. ;! RESULTS MADE PUBLIC. Press. Association—Copyright NEW PLYMOUTH, This J>ay. .Six months ago, Coal, Oil (l\.Z.) Ltd. a Sydney Company engaged a party of Elbof Gcophysicists to investigate petroleum deposits in tlita district, the results of naif a year's Vvcrk are now communicated by ±vi.r McGeachie managing director. The survey so far resulted in locating about four hundred acres containing extensive commercial crude oil accumulations, west of Paritutu in the Omata district, which is the locality favoured for boring by Professor Warner of Bonn University in It'll and urgently ■•eeoujmende j for detailed geophysical investigations by the Swiss Petrologist Di Bcssard and Dr. Krahmann of t\, Berlin Mining Academy. The most exhaustive investigation clearly indicates la/rgo unbroken oil accumulations.

The original seat was in tertiary layens whence the oil has worked its way by volcanic movements and earth pressure to secondary layers at a convenient depth located l&y the survey.

Here large unbroken accumulations will be encountered and the! Weaker oil horizons will probably be met in the higher strata. "Whether the areas east of Paritutu are equally favoured is still a problem only soluble by geophysiicals investigation, which will Tie continued! for six months betore investigating the holdings at Waipatikf and the Gisborne district.

Meanwhile geological surveys, by Dr. Bossard in New Plymouth, M;r McGeachie says can bo safely regarded as having finally established the existence of crude ail in extensive commercial quantities, and the seepages prove it is of an extraordinary ity rich quality. The discovery heralds a great new industry in New-Zealand and assures a future economic independence of the Dominion and Australia in respect to petroleum oils.