TREMENDOUS “BLOW-OUT”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6, 28 April 1914, Page 5

TREMENDOUS “BLOW-OUT”

AT NEW PLYMOUTH OILWELLS. At about four o’clock yesterday afternoon the rotary bore of the Taranaki (X.Z.) Oihvells Company, Ltd., became violently active. There have been “blow-outs” at this boro during the past few weeks, but “oilology” must coin a new word to describe yesterdays ebullition. It was stupendous, deafening and aweinspiring. A local newspaper representative reports ***that at a distance of almost a mile, a dull roar gave promise that there was something without equal in the history of the common or garden “blow-out” which the sceptic is prone to regard as a “soaping of the geyser.” On the derrick site the scene beggared description.

Around the derrick itself the ground was slippery with mud, which trickled and oozed in all directions, some even finding its way to the road outside th 6 derrick site. But inside the derrick! Dante’s inferno without the flames, a subterranean Bacchanalian riot in open revolt,' a screaming challenge by the god who guards the oil seams against the unseemly hand of man meddling with forces which, once invoked, lie cannot control. You cannot hear, you cannot see, you cannot hear in your Oars the screaming roar of this subterranean giant, this unloosed fury of the Unknown, shrieking his protest from 2400 feet below. The fumes of tho gas are stifling, the noise of the core is deafening—the derrick is a very good place to be out of. There is nothing to do, as tho manager remarks, but to let this fury wear itself out, and feel thankful that it has an outlet for its belchings through the sides of the upper derrick. Man with his feeble scratchings has ventured into old niggard Nature’s close-guarded secrets. She has revolted, and for once man can only stand in fatuous wonderment at the forces he has let loose.

At nine o’clock last night the demonstration still continued with the same activity and deafening noise. No work could be done, and no one was allowed near the derrick owing to the fire risk. .

At the start, some twelve barrels of pure oil were ejected from the bore, and were saved.

Mr Carter informed the reporter that during the last few days the staff had been drilling in order to reach the oil seam. On Saturday the manager reported that the drill had passed through the hard formation, and was entering a sticky stratum which led him to expect a strong gas exhalation before long. His expectations were certainly realised.