PETROLEUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 23, 20 February 1909, Page 6

PETROLEUM.

W£VJSLOr.Um\S IN NIIIUHIA. At the third annual meeting of lln* Nigeria liitumcu Company in London, on December 10th last, a lengthy address was given by tin; chairman of directors, Mr* J. S. Rerghcim. "The Petroleum World,"' a representative Rriti>h authority in all branches of the petroleum industry, referring to tnis compaay and its \\ est Atrii-an operations, sjivs ; " Air Bergheini is known to he an oil man of wry great experience." /ii name is connected with many of the biggest oil ventures, including the Anglo-Mexican Oillields, Limited.

!n his speech -Mr IJcrgheini .summed up his intelligence as follows: "We have struck oil.' 1 physically and meiapiiorieally. The company hoids over MOD square miles ol territory, A strip oi country JUT'/a miles long by 10 miles wide was not sullicicnt for the directors, who recently obtained the license of aimtlrr

desirable belt. The company was as-1 i n a the the form 1 No was^^^^^^^^J no date was lixed for we got oil, and if we got oil to pay the money back out of cent, of the oil that we got, tiiat 75 p"V ' cent., of course, stopping as soon as the debt was paid. Well, for the sake ; of convenience, the money was to be paid j to us in quarterly instalments over two ! years, and that was also, no doubt, a precaution—although it was not mentioned—against our tflKnig all the money and suddenly stopping and nut doing anything. . . No. 5 well, the first to reach the oil, was drilled with one of the rigs purchased out of our lirst instalment. To-day that money is stopped. The Covernmcnt cannot give us any more because the understanding was that as soon as we got oil in paying quantities the quarterly instalments would cease. . . The total amount we have had from the colonial Government is ±'.0250. That is a debt which will be paid when we begin to realise oi). , . 1 want you to understand that oil belts are comparatively narrow things, and that, for instance, whetuer we get oil in borehole No. 0, which i* four miles further north, or not, in my opinion there is no connection between the two, and 1 think Sir Roverton Redwood will bear me out in that." (Sir 1 {overtoil Redwood: Yes.) Mr. Bergheim continued: "At the present moment we are pumping the sand out of the borehole. That, again, was one of the things which frightened shareholders when the report was published, namely, tlr.U we had struck «aud, aud that sand wih coming up in large quantities, j Now, so far from that being a bad , thing, the more sand we pomp out the more, according to some theories, we loosen or open out the crevices, aud will thus get. an inllow from a much wider area. . . The fact is that in all good oil-producing countries all oil wells pump cut a lot of mud and sand before they

turn into big producers, ami, as a ride, wells that have not done thai are small producers. • • Mod vein* and sand are good features. If you were to go •to Kouinania you would se<« huge mountains of sand which had been thrown up by the oil when the oil was first struck. The. same thing is happening in Nigeria.

, . Then one of these days we may have a cable telling us that we have

struck salt water. I believe the lirst water we got was salt water. If it had not 1 should have been told of it as a bad feature. But salt water is almost invariably found in oil wells. . . If you are in oil territory there will be salt water then'." The matter of salt wat'-r in the bores was referred lo by Mr. Bergheiin at the annual meeting of the Anglo-Mexican Oilfields, Ltd.. M whose directorate he is chairman, when he said that he personally would be very sorry to be drilling in any territory where there was no salt water, for he did not believe oil was obtained anywhere "where salt water did not occur. It was, as a matter of fact, a good indication. The remarks of Mr. "Bergheiin bear out the assurance'of the Taranaki Petroleum Company's manager that the presence of salt water (not sea water) in the No. 2 bore is an excellent indication. The Nigerian oil-boring seems to be proceeding in country very similar in formation to Taranaki.