EMPIRE'S OIL FUTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 16, 13 July 1911, Page 7

EMPIRE'S OIL FUTURE.

MR. J. D. lIE.NRY ON OPENINGS FOR BRITISH ENTERPRISE. The following is taken from the London Evening Standard of May 25: —

Mr. J. D. Henry, the well-known oil expert, has just returned to London after a six months' trip round the world in the interests of colonial oil. In an interview with one, of our representatives to-day, Mr. Henry gave a summary of his general impressions of the piesent position and future prospects of tho industry. Mr. Henry discussed at the outset London's attitude towards foreign parts of the petroleum industry. The buoyant tone and financial prodigality of last year, lie said, had been succeeded by a feeling of extreme nervousness. 11l other words, investment and faith in the industry had sustained a check, which was due to some extent to a temporary surfeit of misdirected capital. ''Time will, 1 hope, mend matters somewhat," said Mr. Henry. "The fault is not with the industry itself; Xaturc provides no better field for a wise investment <if capital tJian we find in many of nuc foreign oil fields, and if ever we reach a time when even 50 per cent, of tho money subscribed for oilfield undertakings is employed for the legitimate business of prospecting and drilling, new and valuable territories will be discovered and old ones will be worked with those financial results which are frequently expected by mining undertakings.

"A most deplorable feature of the situation is that some of the companies will fail to win oil, not because the oil is not on their properties, but because they will, owing to insufficiency of finance, and for engineering and other reasons, which T need not enumerate, fail to get it. In other words, some of tbe companies, and not the oilfields in which they are operating, will be to blame if thev meet with little success.

"[ should like to point out that the present foreign oil share market and financial position in London must in a way be satisfactory to those who have worked to bring about, better times for colonial oil. Since the beginning of the present year—and it is a dull year coinpared with 1010—many millions have been raised in London for foreign petroleum undertakings. "The fact that our people have gono into so many foreign undertakings shows the measure of their great faith in a properlv-worked oil industry. But if it is the duty of every country in which petroleum may bo found to encourage the discovery and use of its deposits, it is surely the duty of the British people to pay some attention to the development of the oil resources of their own Empire regardless of outside opinion and the. hostile criticism of foreign petroleum papers. "If we will (inly do this, we will build up a petroleum industry which will, in the limit of eight years, be second only to that of America and ultimately the greatest of the kind in the world.