OIL STRUCK?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21559, 23 January 1940, Page 8

OIL STRUCK?

Favourable Indications Midhurst Report NEW PLYMOUTH. January 13. Oil. it has been reported, has been found a few miles to the east of Midhirst. Although this report is unconfirmed, the steel bore casing and angle steel lying in the Midhirst railway yards are not without their significance. For some time the New Zealand Petroleum Company has been testing for oil in Taranaki. A recent report stated that oil had been struck at Whangamomona yet if it was intended to commence operations there, it seems improbable that material for a derrick and bore would be deposited at Midhirst.

A special investigation in the district of the reported strike made by a Herald reporter to-day showed that without a doubt there are definite indications of the presence of petroleum. In an area of small radius around the strike are numerous salt, sulphur and gas springs, which always indicate the presence of petroleum. Further, where oil is close to the surface the country above is generally bad. To-day, in an unfertile sand-stone belt, gas was found bubbling to the surface through water. It was odourless and colourless and burned with a blue flame, igniting immediately at the touch of a lighted match. The origin of oil has been the subject of hundreds of theories both wind and feasible, yet although its origin has not been determined it is known that oil is the primary product and gas the secondary. Thus this gas has considerable significance. Scientist’s Statement

It was once stated by Mr F. G. Clapp, an American scientist: “If you bore in the structural formation of Taranaki you will probably find your oil. a thing hitherto not done by any one company.” By structural formation he was referring to the anti-clinal formation, that is a dome formed by the development of the earth’s crust. On the surface of the dome is a cap of impervious material such as papa, which will hold oil under. Beneath that is the oilbearing sand and lower still water. The peak of the dome, through the action of the weather, will wear away leaving the impervious cap thinner than on the sides, and releasing the gas, which being lighter than oil, will emerge first to break through to the surface.

Although it would need a complete geological survey to conclusively prove that the sandstone belt visited to-day was the top of an anti-clinal, there are many indications which point to this as not improbable. The locality was high, the sandstone indicated a thin crust and. further, gas was emerging from below. This gas spring has been known for some years but has never yet been exploited. Connection with Spring? There is a possibility that oil of the reported strike is connected with this spring. The reported strike was on more fertile country than the spring, and may be lower down on the anticlinal formation. Without a thorc igh survey this cannot be advanced as a theory, merely a possibility. But although the locality of the reported strike is more fertile, the land is soft, which would allow the use of the rapid rotary bore. The bore casing at Midhirst is for this type of drill. Naturally enough the method of oil research differs vastly from that used when men first sounded for oil in Taranaki three-quarters of a century ago. In those days, when oil bubbling up through the sand at Moturoa, New Plymouth, and the tainting of water wells inland with a taste of kerosene attracted optimistic companies, the search was an entirely different and slower proposition than to-day. Modern apparatus has enabled the New Zealand Petroleum Company to efficiently and quickly make their tests. By means of seismographical apparatus, the nature of the country through which the bore must pass Is determined. This is done by recording on a graph the impulses in the earth caused by an explosion. A shallow trial bore is then sunk, and in the Midhirst district seems to have yielded results.