PETEOLEUM DEPOSITS IN BRITISH TERRITORY. •

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8665, 30 December 1889, Page 2

PETEOLEUM DEPOSITS IN BRITISH TERRITORY. •

NEW PLYMOUTH POSSESSES SPECIAL ADVANTAGES. IMPORTANT ARTICLE BY CHARLES MARVIN. In the National Revieio for the month of November, Mr Charles Marvin has an interesting article on Petroleum Deposits, from which we make the following extracts : — . It is a remarkable circumstance that although within the limits of the British Empire are situated the largest oil deposits in the world, yet up to now no serious attempt has been made to take in hand the organization of the petroleum industry. To America and Russia we pay annually more than two millions sterling for petroleum oil, whilst India ou her part pays nearly a million. Thirty years ago petroleum was almost unknown to commerce. The first well was only bored in 1859. At the present time the world's consumption amounts to nearly two thousand million gallons of crude oil, and the demand is necessarily increasing. It is difficult to realise what this enormous quantity really represents ; mere figures convey so little to the ordinary mind. An attempt, however, may be made this way. At present tank Bteamers are running between the United States and Great Britain, conveying 4000 tons or over 1,000,000 gallons of oil at the time. These vessels exceed 300 feet in length, and are in every respect colossal oil carriers; yet it would require a fleet of nearly 2000 of them to convey all the crude oil that now flows or is pumped from the petroleum wells of the world. The business of producing and refining this enormous volume of oil is, for the most part, held by two countries — the United States and Russia. In the former the industry is thirty years old ; in the latter it is barely ten. Curiously enough, the impulse that started the entire industry came from this country, notwithstanding that England has enjoyed none of the results of its development. It was the discovery by Young that mineral oil could be burnt in lamps, and made commercially successful, that turned men's minds to the utilisation of petroleum. Young commenced operations shortly after the Crimean War, and used the scanty oil tricklingß to be found in various parts of England. The supply of the raw material proving inadequate, he turned his attention from the English petroleum springs to the oleaginous shale of Scotland, from which he succeeded in distilling paraffin. This oil had a large sale, till the Americans began to manufacture kerosene, a rival article obtained from the flowing oil springs of Pennsylvania. As the Americans simply had to bore for oil, which on being " struck " flowed like water, whilst the Scotch had first to dry their shale coal from mines and afterwards extract the oil from it, the copious and cheap supply of petroleum very soon superseded paraffin, and although the name still remains, nearly all the mineral oil used in this country, as well as throughout the civilised world, is American and Russian kerosene, refined from crude petroleum. The Scotch oil industry still exists, it is true, but the paraffin produced is not the primary article of the business, but merely a bye product. The refiners of Scotland have managed to maintain a chequered existence by manufacture f r om shale oil of manure (sulphate of ammonia), soap, and candles. But for these commodities the shale oil industries must have gone down before petroleum, the same as the palm and whale oil industries have done. In the United Kingdom we have no petroleum deposits rich enough to attract the driller ; our principal oil fields are situated in Burmah and Canada. This is no serious disadvantage because the oil deposits of Russia are not found in that country itself, but on the Asiatic confines of the Empire, in that part of TransCaucasia formerly belonging to Persia. Viewed from the point of view of cheap and expeditious transport, the Burmese oil fields are quite as close, if not closer, to London than the Baku oil fields are to St. Petersburg. The Burmese oil fields even compare favourably in this respeot with those of America, which are situated some 300 or 400 miles from the sea coast; the Yenangyoung oil district being alongside the river Irrawady, at a short distance from the sea. The Burmese oil fields only came into our possession with the annexation of Upper Burma a few years ago. There has not been, therefore, much time for their development. The great Canadian oil deposits of Mackenzie basin also only came within the sphere of commercial activity with the completion of the Canadian Pacific railway. In the latter case another year or two must elapse the branch lines to the Sashatchiwan district can be finished and provide the means of easy transport. In Burmah oa the other band, the locomotive already runs within 60 miles of Yenangyoung, and the deposits being on the bank of a navigable river, must be regarded as quite ripe for English exportation. In America more than 55,000 oil wells have been drilled, and hundreds are added to the number every year. The depth ranges from 1500 to 3000 feet. In Burma only surface pits, dug out by natives to the depth of 200 or 300 feet, furnish the existing oil supply at Yenangyoung. What lies below 300 the drill alone can reveal. In this respect the position of affairs in Burma is similar to that which prevailed at Baku before the Swedes introduced drilling ten years ago. The old Persian pits, like the Burmese pits, had been worked for countless ages without yielding more than a slight dribbling supply, sufficient for the need of the natives. The moment the drill went down the outburst of imprisoned petroleum was prodigious. In some cases millions of gallons of oil spouted to the height of 200 or 300 feet, rivalling the famous Geysers of Iceland. One the giant "gusher" oil fountains — the Drooj ha— spouted over 50 million gallons of petroleum before the well could be tapped and placed under control. Another, the " Tagieff, well discharge oil to the height of nearly 400 feat; the quantity shot to the surface was 2£ million gallons daily, representing more than the prod notion of all the oil wells in the world put together, including the 25,000 Americans. The flow did not last long, and for want of a proper reservoir, most of the oil was wasted. The depth of the " Tagieif " well was only 714 feet, or a little more than twice the depth of the present hand scooped pits of Burma. Until the drill was employed, not even the oldest Russian geologists had the least idea that so vast a supply of oil existed beneath the pits and pools of Baku. To the successful prospector a good well is better than a gold mine. The " Droojba " well coßt £1500 to bore ; it yielded enough oil to have realised a million sterling had il been situated in America. Mr Marvin says that for want of storage and transport the owners of these wells have lost a million sterling. The wells now produce seven hundred millions of gallons of crude oil I every year, and more than 100 refineries stretched along the coast of Baku Bay turn out 200 millious of gallons of refined or lamp oil annually. 1< rom forty piers are exported several millions of tons of refuse oil to provide fuel for 1000 bteamers, ocomotives, and factory engines in various parts of Russia. Upwards of 100 new tank steamers are necessarily running with cargoes from Baku to the mouth of the Volga. From Vol^a nearly 10,000 tankoara are employed m convoying the oil by rmitoray to wim pwtj e$ Rum,

Hundreds of iron reservoirs, erected at differentcentres,provide accommodation for the hundred and twenty million gallons of oil. Mr Marvin further says that at Batoum, thanks to the millions of gallons of oil pouring through its ports to Europe, keeping a fleet of steamers incessantly employed, _ a miserable Turkish town has developed in a few years into a powerful and prosperous mercantile community, exporting to India alone last year ten millions of gallons of petroleum, of which a million gallons went to the very Burmah where our eastern oil fields are situated. Finally a light excise tax on kerosene, newly imposed last year, yielded nearly three-quarters of a million sterling, and enabled the Minister of Finances to present to the Emperor the best budget report for thirteen years. The Canadian deposits are situated at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and their area covers 100,000 square miles of territory. Up to the present time English enterprise and capital have entirely ignored this find of oil; but when a start is made activity will probably rush to the other extreme, as is the wont with speculation in this country. Besides Burmah and Canada, New Zealand also possesses important petroleum deposits. Those of the Taranaki district have a unique characteristic, in that they underlie enormous deposits of pulverised iron ore — the famous ironsand beaches of New Zealand. Through these deposits the oil oozes up to the surface, promising a supply of liquid fuel for smelting purposes as soon as the drill taps the subterranean reservoir. Last year the New Zealand Government despatched Mr Gordon, Inspecting Engineer of the Mines Department, to visit the locality. On his arrival he found " small quantities of petroleum with numerous jets of carburetted hydro - gen bubbling up along the ocean beach " near New Plymouth; while inland the settlers could not obtain water from wells, on account of the infilteration of oil into the borings. If the information he gathered is to be relied on, " it goes to show," reports Mr Gordon, " that petroleum exists over a large area, and that is only a question of boring to the requisite depth to get at its source." The proximity of the oil deposits to the millions of tons of ironsand lying along the coast, provides in this case the factor for the development, not only of the petroleum industry, but also of Ihe iron industry on a vast scale. Moreover, while Baku is distant 250 miles from the Black Sea, and the United States' oilfields have to pipe their " crude " oil several hundred ' miles to the refineries on the coast, the New Zealand oil supply is in actual touch with the ocean. New Plymouth, therefore, possesses special advantages which in the future should tell in the competition with Baku and Pennsylvania, and enable New Zealand to occupy a unique position among the petroleum Powers of the world.