OILFIELDS AT SEA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 22 November 1924, Page 13

OILFIELDS AT SEA.

WONDERS OF GULF OF MEXICO.

Vessels from the, Gulf of Mexico bring to New York every now and then reports of a petroleum area in the gulf itself, and the observation of years indicates that to the treasure in sunken ships there must be added submarine oilfields, if one is to attempt an estimate of the world’s submerged wealth.

Possibly, in time, the question of the freedom of the seas, or jurisdiction in the three-mile limits or twelve-mile zones, may come to include control over marine gushers, declares the New York Times. At present this sea oilfield, whether large or small, is not regarded as practicable. There is ample proof of the existence of oil under the gulf, however, and the Government’s hydrographic chaits of currents show an elliptical area, 150 miles or so at its widest, enclosed in a dotted line on the chart labelled “oilfield.” This field lies south-east of Galveston, more than 200 miles off the coast, and the axis of the zone runs close to the thousand-fathom curve of the gulf’s floor. Six thousand feet is considerably more than a mile, deeper than a practical diving depth, it is finely that oil will become much scarcer than it is now before any reputable genius will turn to devising ways to get at this supply. How much might be developed by working the bottom of the sea- there is no telling, but experience in the developement of land wells indicates that the supply .which oozes out without drilling is not of much account. Real progress calls for well sinking.

Oil has beep, sighted elsewhere in the gulf, but the so-called oiltield is comparatively constant. The surface indications have been observed by many passing ships through many 3 ears, and in various sorts of weather. Yet if vessels 150 miles apart report surface oil 011 the same day, and other vessels in between them, it does not necessarily mean that oil is leaking up over that whole area.

“The action of waves could spread the oil, which forms a film that has virtually no thickness,” says J. H. Hall, of Texas, who has oil interests on the landward side of the gulf. “One small seepage miglit account for the oil seen on _ the water; one so little that it would scarcely be noticed on land. The oil might rise, not in a column, but in bubbles. It might come up now from one place and now another, as • the wave action closed up the sand on the floor of the gulf.” In the arly days of petroleum in Pennsylvania, farmers sometimes found oil seeping to the surface of brooks. In at least one instance a brook was dammed and the oil skimmed off, yielding a few barrels a year. Modern engineering has gone little, .further in recovering oil from water. Sumps have been filled by rain, and expensive dehydrating plants have been installed to recover the oil, but according to engineers the results have not been notably successful. Once a Mexican well ran wild into a creek bed. The stream was dammed and strained, but again the proportion of recovery was small. There are other signs of oil under the Gulf of Mexico than this field indicated on the charts. There is no question that this oil is petroleum produced by Nature, and, not merely waste oil from ships cleaning up, or jettisoning fuel for one reason or another—a practice which has caused considerable trouble to shipping in and near 'barhours and which has been brought under regulation with the increased use of oil as fuel.

Close to the Texas shore there are two sea areas reputed ;to be controlled by oil. No oil has ever , been seen there, however; its presence is surmised from the constant .tranquillity of the waters, which are relatively smooth, even during storms, and so are havens for coasting craft in rough weather. These two spots are small; they are oval in shape and each is less than a mile across at the widest. They are known as the old pond, and. the new, and the more western shifted its position in a big storm in 1878. The fact that the sea never breaks over them, and the presumption that oil is the cause of their tranquility lias made these spots famous in seamen,s treatises on the use of oil to quiet waters during a storm, a practice mentioned in the Bible and often followed to-day. It has been suggested that the quiet of these spots is due to the disturbance by waves of tliiok niud composed largely of animal and vegetable remains; hut the presence of such mud under more troubled water areas raises an objection. judication of oil under the gulf is the more or less frequent discovery of a substance known popularly as sea wale. It is found on the beach from Sabine to Corpus Christi; cakes six or eight feet across and two indies thick, with traces of concentric formation, indicating that thev have been formed by spreading out from a central liomt of seepage. . Chemical analysis has shown that sea wex is a petroleum residuum, or asphaltum. There is a large tranquil area in the north central portion of the, gulf ,'inown as the Central hJea; the water from the Mississiopi seems to through or over the water of the Gulf Stream, being collected and held in a cicular motion and forming a small Sargasso Sea. The water here is colder than near by, muddy, and of a different greenish hue. It has been called a dead water zone. A derelict ship once drifted in this circle for a month, not far from the great sweep of the Gulf Stream itself. Says the Hydrographic Office: ‘‘The fresh water seems to act like oil in smoothing down the sea, and it resists the formation of waves at the boundary of the fresh and salt water.”

Oil boonis on dry land have sometimes been started on indications not much stronger than those which a e sighted by seafarers in. the gulf. At present, however, the value of submerg. ed oil wells is somewhat less than tiie value of submerged real estate.