WORLD HUNT FOR OIL.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16506, 6 August 1919, Page 10

WORLD HUNT FOR OIL.

Our prosperity depends largely upon liquid luel. I here is no economic question winch approaches this in urgency or magnitude—the more so, in that ivo shall be 73,000,000 tons ul coal short in the current year, as compared with 1013. the farm-tractor burns oil, as well as the motor car. Our battleships use liquid niel; our cruisers, desl layers, ami submarines. Inc whole future or civilian Hying depends upon petroleum. To supply the Orand Feet with oil we built a pipe-line across Scotland, from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth. So great is the demand, that it is imperatively necessary to open up new sources, especially now tnat wells in the Caucasus (Baku), Koiimania, Galicia, and Bersia are either not producing at all, or very little. Mexico is a marvellously rich field; there arc •‘gushers” in the Tampico Felt which can fill an ocean tanker overnight. The Culled States once led the world in this staple, but her own demands—she has now 5,000,000 motorcars—are causing so serious a shortage that in another generation her oil supplies may bo entirely exhausted. America's production in 1916 was 202.300.000 barrels of 12 gallons each. Of this, nearly three-fourths wont to the production of power. ; Geologists are now boring in all directions, in the ■States of Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. But the oil industry is almost us uncertain as gold-mining. A well sunk in a poor locality where 100 tons a day was a good yield, suddenly spouted 4000 tons n day, so that much of it was lost before it could he got under control. Another trading concern bought 20.000 acres of ‘‘unproven” land in Mexico. They struck oil in astounding stylo; one well gave a flow of 180,000 barrels a day 1 A Tosa-n wolf that was "constant” at 500 barrels a day was slightly deepened, whereupon it gushed out at the rate of 6000 barrels a day. The oil-hearing sand is surrounded by other strata which holds the liquid in a sort of sealed reservoir. When this is pierced the gas expands and carries the oil up with it out of the hole.—By a Mining Engineer in London Evening News.