OIL IN BRITAIN?

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 72, 26 March 1934, Page 8

OIL IN BRITAIN?

Every country lias a natural desire to find, ■within its own boundaries, the coveted material things of life, from gold to oil, and from oil to ambergris. But in a young and incompletely explored country like New Zealand,' one has a confident expectation of finding new natural resources —an expectation that is not nearly so keen in the ancient isle of Britain, where the Romans ruled nearly 2000 years ago, following: on a civilisation (Briton and pre-Briton) that is now said to have been, in itself, many centuries old. After thousands of years of occupation, what can be left to be discovered in the cradle land of the race? : "A hasty answer is "nothing," but that answer will not bear examination. Men can mine to a depth of hundreds of feet over centuries, and yet miss oil wealth at thousands of feet. They can also overlook the value'in minerals even close to their hands, for science is creating new mineral values every day, by developing new demands and better extraction processes'. Even the very soil itself has only been scratched, and who can say. that the new agriculture will'fail to make any country self-contained in soil products—at a price? A review by a scientist of the application of science to agriculture, lately published, shows how remarkably recent in elate are the greatest realised results, and how much more there is to be done. Hitherto, the production of j both minerals and soil-products (food and raw material) has been determined mostly by competition: Under Free Trade, prices and freights were so low that it paid a country better to import than to be self-contained. Tariffs, quotas, shipping restrictions, etc., have challenged all that. Exports enter under the pistol of quotas and anti-dumping laws, and fear of a war that may close the sea-tracks has created new defence arguments in the field of home-production. Hence it is not impossible that the twentieth century may see not only the discovery of British oil but of a new Britain, an ancient land renewing its youth with the aid of the new knowledge. Always, p£.course, at a price^