PETROLEUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 3 December 1907, Page 3

PETROLEUM.

THE iuy PUIiJSSUKIi. .Mr. Simpson, the Canadian expert, calculates that the gas coming up lruui Mo. 1 bore is eijual to between 75,000 and 100,000 cubic feet per twenty-four Jiouru. It' the well is nnule dry—which irs to say if the water dillieulty is overcome—the well could be made to pay handsomely as a gas-producing agent, and, in the opinion of the expert, would soon repay what the well has cost the company up to the present. Mr. .Simpson has drilled a great many gas wells in Canada and. America; in fact for two and a half years before accepting engagement with the Taranaki company he was doing nothing else but drilling gas wells. In con-

versation with a "News" man, he stated that there ib as much money in a gas well as there is in an oil well. k, i hope the time will come, and I see nothing to stop it coming,•' lie continued, "when the whole of the machinery in New Plymouth and neighbourhood will be run by gas supplied by the wells. Xo other power is as cheap as this subterranean gas. The cost of gas in New Plymouth is 10s per thousand feet, less discount of 2s 0d or thereabout—7s Gd net, say. We could supply it for a few

pence only." "Hut may Ijp right enough, hut what of tlK' danger of tlx- wells giving out?" interrogated the pressman. "Jf the wells are any good at all, there is no danger of their petering out very quickly. For instance, there arc wells in Ontario with which 1 was formerly connected that have been supplying the City of Buffalo, forty miles away, for the past fourteen years. Again, the City of Detroit has been getting its supply from wells thirty-live miles away for many years. The same wells supply Ohio, 1:20 miles further on. 11l Detroit the gas is retailed at eight cents. (4d) per thousand feet." "But are the condition* the same here as in the places you mention!" "Yes, only, of course, the gas wells are dry there; here they are not dry up to the present. That is our work—to bore down to a hard strata in which the piping can lie embedded, and theieby keep out the water. As I have before told you, a well w of no earthly account, either for oil or gas, if it is not water-proof. Taking the present pressure a t No. 1 bore as lOUOlbs, it would be great enough to allow of it being piped'through to Stratford and all the "country around. Yes; yo uhave great possibilities in this neighborhood.