PETROLEUM NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 219, 24 December 1910, Page 4

PETROLEUM NEWS.

TARANAKI COMPANY. , Fair progress is being made with the work at No. 1 bore of the Taranaki Petroleum Company, and at No. 5 there' is an improvement in the nature or the country being penetrated. No. 2 is flowing as usual, and No. 3 continue* to flow fairly strongly. Drilling operations are being continued at this bore, • and a new formation is being gone through. From December 1 to the 22nd there had been 242 visitors to the works. Applications for preference shares are coming in freely, and the directors will have a, large number to deal with at their next meeting. The coming year is bound to see great developments in connectidn with New Zealand's petroleum industry.(says the Poverty Bay Herald). Initial difficulties have been overcome at New Plymouth, and though the Taranaki people themselves scarcely seem to realise it, the production has reached such a point that payable prospects for a great industry are assured. At Kotuku, where an English syndicate, organised by Mr. D. Ziman, is about to resume active drilling work, and at Gisborne, where in addition to the good prospects obtained toy the local company, operations are sihortly to be commenced by the New Zealand Oilfields, Ltd., whose expert investigators have been with us several weeks, there are equal reasons for sanguine belief that oil will ultimately be found.

A London correspondent writes, under date of October 28:-r"In reply to an enquiry, the secretary of the Helouan Petroleum Company, which was formed last- year, has written to a shareholder a letter showing that the board has decided not to go on with the property in Egypt, from which it takes its name, but to transfer its attention to an oilfield at Kotuku, New Zealand, which property it is now examining. The shag*holder complains that the shareholder* ought not to have been asked to subscribe until the board had made sure of the desirableness of the/first property, and that the shareholders might hafp been offered an opportunity of having their money returned when the purpoß* for which they really subscribed it wasabandoned.