OIL FROM COAL DEPOSITS

Taranaki Daily News, 28 December 1929, Page 13

OIL FROM COAL DEPOSITS

USE OF BY-PRODUCTS. Sydney, December 12, The coal crisis in the northern firid.of New South Wales has served to revive the question of exploiting and utilising the by-products of coal in the rich .Cess-nock-Greta 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. ' . •.> Both the Federal and State Governments have promised to investigate the possibilities of this new industry, as one means of putting new life into a field which has been in the throes of industrial turmoil since-about 1914. M?n, however, like Sir. J. M. Bafideley, who, as Minister for Mines in the Lang Lab our Government, investigated these product processes abroad, say they are convinced that the position demands immediate action. Something, it is urged, will’ certainly have to 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 18,000,000 working days. It is said by I those advocatingg the fullest use of the I State’s by-product coal that the genius of German research and organisation will make it possible for that' country, by the use of these processes, to be independent of American or other, oil; supplies within the next ten years.' ; And that, it is observed, is a country without any natural oil supplies.-- /• • Germany, it is stated, has eo established this industry as to be .in apposition 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 Governments should take a hand in it. Tested for oil in London, coal from the Ccssnock-Greta seam is said to have yielded excellent results