PETROLEUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 366, 18 April 1910, Page 2

PETROLEUM.

The Petroleum Review, in its issue of February 2lith, states:—"At last, after many years of waiting petroleum enterprises in almost any part of the world have claimed, tile serious attention of the British capitalistic classes, and today oil shares on the London Stock Exchange iare the most sought after of any industrial securities on the market. We are, without a doubt, in the midst of the greatest oil boom which this country has ever known. Those in the 'inner circle,' as it were, maintain that the present boom which has been slowly manifesting itself for a. month or two has come to stay, and that for many months to come oil stocks will form the most popular investment. We on our part can only hope that the present activity will continue, and inasmuch as the general movement is upon a substantial basis there is every appearance of its doing so. We have- for many years been surprised at the comparatively small support which petroleum enterprises have met with at the hands of the British capitalist, who, while rushing headlong into other forms of essentially speculative mining concerns has rather been inclined to throw a wet blanket over the most promising petroleum propositions. One reason for this lack of confidence may possibly be said to have been brought about by reason of the fact that several of the English i oil enterprises have scarcely proved to be paying propositions, but when one' comes to consider the enormous number of petroleum companies backed up by public capital, and the remarkable profits they have made during''the greater part 'of their career, it must be admit-, ted that the proportion of non-paying oil investments to-day is comparatively small." The following five flotations inj recent years of petroleum enterprises subscribed by British capitalists are quoted: Shell Transport Co., £2,300,000; Burmah Oil Co, £1,100,000; Californian Oilfields, £400,000; Lobites Oilfields, £360,000; and Scottish Shale Oil Investments, £1,000,000. Here we have investments in ordinary share capital representing over £6,000,000 in petroleum concerns, the successful parallel of which it would be hard to find. Each concern, the Review asserts, has paid solid dividends, in some cases there being 50 per cent., and in others the whole of the subscribed capital has, in the shape of dividends, been returned to the shareholders, while to-day these petroleum investments stand at a market value of approximately £19,000,000. There are, the Review admits, several concerns w-hich have not so far, for various reasons, yielded returns to the shareholders, but looking at the question broadly the proportion of such companies is smaller than that found in other branches of commercial enterprise. "Closely identified as we are with the petroleum industry," says the writer, "we view the present outlook with feelings of gratification, not because it is merely a boom which, after subsiding, might leave petroleum investments much in the same position as it found them, but particularly because iwe see in it a deeper and far'nipre important meaning. The present boom signalises the advent of an age of a vast expansion of the petroleum industry in almost every part of the world. The claims of petroleum have not been boomed from the housetops, yet with the popularity of the motor industry, which practically depends 'upon the more valuable products of petroleum for its power, and with the extended use of liquid fuel_ in many directions, but notably in its great utilisation bv the British Admiralty, the public has already learned to recognise the great safetv which must of necessitv underlie petroleum investments in almost every shape and form."