The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1912. THE COMING OF OIL.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1428, 1 May 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1912. THE COMING OF OIL.

Long before the great coiil strike actually began there were many warnings to the miners that by striking they would do themselves the damage of providing an eager audience for oil fuel to the detriment of the demand for coal. The warnings appear to be already far on the way towards justification: the English papers by the cud of March had begun to be full of serious discussions of the potentialities of oil fuel and of the prospects of oil engines in general, and the Diesel engine in particular. It was perhaps not by accident that Dr. Diesel came over to England in the middle of March; bis arrival, anyhow, gave a very emphatic impetus to the inclination of the British public, alarmed and exasperated by the shortage of coal, to consider the widespread adoption of oil for mechanical fuel. According to Dr. Diesel, the age of oil as the displacer of solid power-generating substances has already arrived. He has spent many years in perfecting his engine, which has already been successfully tried in the ship Selandia, and which, as a recent cable message told us, has been adopted by the Admiralty for trial. The great feature of the Diesel engine is the fact that it does not require petroleum—it works on crude oil. The advantages of oil over coal are quite obvious. In the first place crude oil suitable for the Diesel engine can be vegetable as well as mineral. The inventor, in looking forward to the age of "huge funnclless ships, swift and smokeless, with engines of from 40,000 to 50,000 horse-power and vastly greater carrying capacity than existing vessels of the same size," looks forward also to the day when coal will generally be converted at the pit-head into gas, coke, and crude oil. The main advantages of oil as steamer fuel are: Cleanliness, ease and convenience of handling, laboursaving, the reduction of bunker space, and the saving of many incidental costs. A writer in the Westminster Gazette quotes some figures prepared by Mr. Kermode, a prominent engineer, to illustrate the case of the Lusitania. Under coal the cost of the fuel and stoking on the New York-Liverpool run is £5477 10s., made up thus: 5500 tons of coal at 18s. 6d., £5087 10s.; 312 firemen at 255. a week, £390. Under oil the cost would'be £4325 155., made up as follows :—3300 tons of oil at 205., £4292; 27 firemen at 255. per week, £33 15s. As a matter of actual fact the oildriven steamer Selandia, of over 4000 tons, carries an engine staff of seven. At the same time, owing to the enormous saving of bunker space she can carry 1000 tons of cargo more than if she were an ordinary coal-driycn ship. There is a good deal of excitement in British engineering circles over the Diesel engines, and perhaps some of the expectations are unduly optimistic. But there is the hard fact that the Diesel engine is actually in use in steamers, in submarines, and in torpedo boats; and the only thing now is the perfection of the machine. As for the sources of supply, they can be made illimitable.. If mineral oils cannot be obtained cheaply, oil-producing vegetables can be cultivated. One writer dreams of an oil-dominated future:

Round tlie coal fields may grow up vast plants converting the coal into coke, producing gas which will l>2 lited in gas en-, gines, and distilling oils for driving lingo Diesel engines. These in their turn may manufacture electric power to bo distributed over the country by great mains, from which the railways and the manufactories will draw current for their motors.. Above the industrial towns will no longer hang a pall of smoke, and no huge chimneys will riso into tho skies. They will be as clean and as healthy as the rural villages, and in tho works, freed from the gases of combustion, silent electric motors will purr gently as they drive the machines. And across the seas will pass fleets of ships without funnels, betraying their presence by no wreath of smoke, carrying far more than tho steamdriven vessel, with silent engines working far beneath the dock, attended only by a few engineers and greasers, and having no scorching stokeholds in which men stripped to the waist face the blistering lieat of furnaces. It is a vision of a new, a cleaner, a more practical, and. a busier world, and of a world which cannot bo brought to blight and starvation by the stoppage of one source of fuel. For just as with Wheat we have brought in tho new worlds to meet tho deficiencies of tho old, so if one source of power fails wo can turn easily to another; if coal is not available we can draw upon the^ ever-expanding output of mineral oil, and if that in its turn should fail wo can find in the fields of the world the oil which will keep tho wheels awhirl.

The double interest for New Zealand in the coming of oil is its bearing on the Taranaki fields, and its warning against anything like impetuosity in "harnessing" those rivers and waterfalls that some foolish politicians weep over as power ''running to waste."