PETROLEUM NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 75, 7 July 1910, Page 4

PETROLEUM NEWS.

OPERATIONS AT 'MOTUROA. Leports from the bores at Moturoa are satisfactory. Good progress is being made with the reaming out and the insertion of the eight-inch casing at No. 1 bore. At No. 3 well, boring is progressing in excellent, country. At No. 2 well there is still a good flow of oil into the tanks. Shareholders are responding liberally to the directors' circular offering preierence shares. Mr. Hokey, M. P,, has been informed by the Hon. R. McKenzie, Minister for Mines, that he will endeavor to arrange for !])r. Bell, Government Geologist, to visit New Plymouth shortly.

STRUCK OIL. A DAY AT THE BORES. MOTUROA PETROLEUM WELLS. (By 140.) If man sunk an eight-inch shaft three thousand odd feet into the earth, ami Nature pushed lumps of coal up it. so that man might take them away without further trouble, shares in that automatic mine would mount aloft as the eagle. In the matter of oil, the patient prospector carefully bores his long hole, piiiilies thousands of feet of steel casing into it, and the oil either does, or does not, rush up the hole to the daylight. Numbers of people in New Zealand do not believe that oil bores in Taranaki are at the moment capable of throwing splendid oil to the height of a four-storey building. Even Taranaki people, who live almost within sight of the ugly structures which cover the precious little holes, are not yet convinced that thousands of people will some day be employed, either directly or indirectly, as a result of the patient work of oil finders. America struck oil an 1859. Many millionaires have been made by oil in Ameriert. Having struck oil, the rest is easy in America.

DOLLARS WANTED., Oil will flow by itself, but it won't •flow very far without dollars. There have been too few dollars available in New Zealand since 1861, the date of thje first strike of oil. In the matter of the oil .bores at Motiiroa, the first thing to do is to convince the people that the wells are not "paper" wells, and the next is to {rather in their monev. If excursion' trips could be arranged to New Plymouth, so that people might see, hear, taste arid smell oil that lisis rame from a depth of three thousand and thirty feet in n. very forcible irnl persistent- way." the rest would be easv. The Taranaki Petroleum Company's three Moturoa bores are sunk on ground that was selected many years ago for a prison site. The prison wis to be an edit'on de luxe b"t happily the project was abandoned. TOWERS OF BABEL.

Instead of a prison there are three gigantic and by no means beautiful derricks 011 the ground. They look like' bizarre attempts to imitate the Tower of Babel in wood. At the top of each unlovely structure is an opened door. A perpendicular ladder is tacked on to the outside, presumably as a means of escape should a workman be engaged inside "when she blows." A greasy smell pervades the atmosphere at Moturoa, and everything is impregnated with oil. One does not realise how far busy men have pushed their steel casings into the earth until one sees hundreds of lengths of them'lying in stacks. They are very eloquent of the real work chat is being done. 'SATURATED WORKERS.

The liealthv hearty men who work like bees are greasy and happy. A constant atmosphere of oil seems to. have no effect on their humor or their appetites. Somebody explains that the eight-inch steel casing "goes" twentyeight pounds to the foot, that it is necessary to put down a series of" casings —each inside the other—and that it often happens that this strong piping gets badly damaged. Some of the old casing pulled out of "Number One" looks as if it had been to Avar, great gups having been torn in it. ( INTO THE UNKNOWN.

The hole is not big enougn, ami so a number of the greasy men'are "'reaming" it—boring with Canadian apparatus on each side of the existing connection with the underworld, to get a greater flow. Every new length of casing is screwed on to the last; a man sits with a couple of levers, lowering the great block and taclde that holds the last length. He works the length up and down (with the aid of the engines) after the manner of a "monney" driving a pile, but the lengths are not really driven, for they already have a more or less fairway. Number One is only a shallow bore at present, it is 233(5 feet deep, and it is expected that when the bore is as deep as the Number Two, the great tank that six navvies are digging alongside won't take very long to fill. MOTHER EARTH'S GASOMETER.

Power is required to drive t';e lifting machinery, .and nature pushes the power up the bores. The gas is already made in the earth mother's gasometer. The obvious tiling to do is to keep Mother Earth from blowing gas and oil to waste all over the country, and to harness her. So Number Two is clamped down good and hard, and a pipe inserted in the cap leads gas all over the grounds —or anywhere else where a pipe can be taken. Number Two is working hnrdest, and the harvest (gas. water, oil and whatever else the earth cares to send) flows through one wipe to a condensing boiler, and is led Sway for use. A great blast roars away in a firebox in the power house. It is rather a quaint experience to look into a white hot furnace that has neither coal nor timber fuel to keep steam up.

It is held that the gas from Number Two borp would light the town of New Plymouth. As an illuminant. it certainly is siuipvinr to the coal gas some gas companies soil. NOT REALLY TOMATO SAUCE. Climb 011 the little step-ladder and look into the huge iron tank in which the oil throbs from Number Two. Don't touch the tank. You will go home smellin" like a kerosene stove. The crude oil looks like thick tomato sauce. Close alongside this iron tank are two -underground tanks. One has about 17,000 gallons of oil in it, and the other something over twenty thousand gallons. Experts tell one that a barrel of this oil, as far as its most precious constituents are concerned—is enual to two and a half baTrels of U.S.A. 'Or Canadian oil. The field, the manager proud I v claims, is as good a one as those in Galicin. Moturoa is situated so favorably tliat once the .financial necessities 'are realised,- the

field must bo worked with extraordinary; ease. Tile existing railway runs withitt a few yards of it, and tlie Tower* of Babel are only a few chains from thfc sco. There is nothing to prevent oil rushing straight out of. the borej through pipes, into the holds of ships. ACTUAL EVIDENCE. 'Number two ia the deepest well Id New Zealand. One hundred and twenty barrels of oil have been 'saved in a wees' from this bore. There are 42 gallons ill a barrel, and, at the present rate ofi flow, 17,000 gallons oil per month can be saved, and a 250 lb. gauge will notregister the gas pressure. The experts are very fond of Number Three, which' is only 2920 feet in depth, but which is to be sunk much deeper. The most precious oil ini the field has been found ia this bore at the present depth, but a

stronger flow is being bored for. Much marketable oil has been saved at Number Three already, andx the pressure of natural! gjtw is- phenomenal. When the cap is off Three and the gas forces the oil out,, a" cascade of large dimensions- is the result. A genial person, exuding; oil from every pore, croolas a thumb towards a greasy shed. The enquirer looks inside.. There are one hundred' barrels of oil there awaiting shipment. An enthusiast tells the enquirer tliat there won't be any need for barrels in the near future, when the people are convinced 1 of the greati wealth that is forcing its way out ot the ground. They will let nature pump it aboard ths ships.

A smell like that from a thousand untrimmed kerosene lamps smites, and following it one finds that it emanateß from a tiny experimental laboratory attached to the office. A gentleman who has smelt oil in many countries is hard' at work at the infant <jil still, which is not a large affair, but it demonstrates the excellence of the product. He*has been obtaining parafin wax, perhaps the most valuable of all the constituents in the oil.

To obtain heat for his still, the worker merely turns tlic gas on from Number Two, applies a match to a pipe, and pushes it into the firebox. Some day there will be a great refinery on the large block of land the company has leased for the purpose. 11l a few weeks the company will push, some steel tubes into the earth at Bell Block and Waitara, in order to see whether nature keeps a good supply of oil in that vicinity. .