OIL FROM COAL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 4

OIL FROM COAL

Although there is always a risk ot being dubbed ultra-conservative and unimaginative in venturing to express doubts as to the wisdom of becoming financially interested in companies exploiting new inventions or new processes (writes the fianneial editor of the Sunday Times, London), it does seem that the subject of oil-from-coal undertakings is being fully justified. The Falmouth Committee’s report recommends the continuation of the

present British preference of 8d per gallon for. another 10 or 12 years in order to give the industry a chance to develop, but it stresses the fact that the cost of producing oil from home coal in present circumstances is too high for the processes to offer any solution to problems of either unemployment of defence. It also concludes that low temperature carbonisation is to be ignored as a possible substantial source of ojl supply within a reasonable period. The defence aspect of the problem has been stressed very much in the past, but the argument appears to be a weak one. A huge plant for domestic oil production must surely be at least as vulnerable in war time as ships bringing oil from overseas. In any case, it seems that the existing preference, which casts the Exchequer £5 per week per man employed, is a very generous contribution towards fostering an industry which still offers nothing more than future possibilities. Investors who interest themselves in oil- from- coal undertakings must realise that the present offers nothing while the future is speculative in the extreme.