PETROLEUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 202, 6 May 1912, Page 6

PETROLEUM.

SUBSTITUTE FOR COAL. IMPETUS GIVEN TO USE OF LIQUID ; FUEL. (From the Lancashire Observer). Every day shipowners are becoming more anxious with regard to the coal supply, which is so necessary for their steamers. The truth of this may be noted easily in a great port like Liverpool, and it is stated that plans are being made for the conversion of machinery on several vessels in order that oil may be substituted for coal. There is a good stock of coal, however. The White Star liner Celtic is on its way from New York loaded with American coal, sufficient to bring her not only to Liverpool but back again to New York. This will entail a big loss to the company, for they will not only have to pay considerably higher for coal on the other I side, they will lose through the appropriation of cargo space for the carrying of the coal. The vessels which have been hit are the coasters. Relying on a daily visit to the tips in order to replenish their fuel, they have simply had to | lie up on discovering that no more coal : was available. I All these considerations have had the effect of turning the shipowner's attention to coal substitute-—liquid fuel—and Mr. J. J. Kermode, a well-known Liverpool authority, made some striking remarks to a press representative. "This coal stVike," !■ -'aid, "will change the whole face of <. ,ineering. Very slowly a change has been taking place for some years, but this strike will act on engineering just like a forcing frame acts on cucumbers. It will not only make engineers think of oil, hut it will make them recognise its supreme importj ance. What will be the effect of granting the miners' demands? Nothing more or less than an increased charge for coal. s Inevitably that will result in a demand j for economical fuel, and an impetus will be given to invention, in which liquid j •fuel will be the predominating feature. The industrial world will decline to be at I the mercy for ever of coal strikes; they will insist on a second string, and you have it in oil. Relying on oil fuel alone there would be no fear of a strike. By means of it you reduce the human element to a minimum, and there is less to be feared from a strike. A steam pump does the work of bringing the oil up (whore mother earth does not do it willingly), and instead of employing thou-( sands of costly railway waggons to trans- ] port it, yon rely on a pipe line. Oil fuel is the great thing of the future, and this coal strike has helped it along as i nothing else would have done. The oldi fashioned idea was that oil was limited II to (Pennsylvania and the Russian Cau- ! | casus, but that has been exploded now, ■) and oil is being sought for and found in I 1 nearly every country in the world, one of the latest being New Zealand. At one time it was thought that if we introduc- , ed oil into the (British Navy we should } be dependent upon other countries for . the fuel.

"That fallacy has gone, too. Oil is being developed in Canada, it is being sought for in the Barbadoes, it has been found in Trinidad and parts of British Africa, it is abundant in Burmah and in some part 9of northern India. These are countries over which the British flag flies, and as to the navy's liking for oil fuel, you have only to think of their order for last year for two hundred million gallons. If it pays the navy to use more 1 oil every year it should pay the mercantile marine. Its utility in other directions is unquestioned. Thousands of railway engines in America, Russia and other countries are being driven by it, and most satisfactory experiments have been made here. The same thing applies to factories, the extra cost of oil being more than repaid by the great saving over coal. I made a suggestion years ago that a pipe line should be run from the Ship Canal to the neighborhood of Hanley or Stoke-on-Trent, thus eliminating at one stroke the present high charges for transporting coal.

I OIL AND POWER. One result of the coal strike in Britain was to call attention forcibly to the advantages of oil fuel, and it seems not improbable that New Zealand will reap an indirect gain from the desire of capitalists and manufacturers to develop the petroleum fields of the Empire as quickly as possible. The Mother Country was found to be practically without stocks of oil, partly as a result of a lack of transport facilities, so that the businesses which depended oh coal were unable to turn to the liquid fuel. The moral was easily read, and it was emphasised by the arrival in the Thames of the first oil-driven ship. Later in March Dr. Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of the oil engine known by his name, paid a visit to London. The Diesel engine is a power producer of extraordinary efficiency, capable of using any oil at all, mineral or vegetable, and experts believe that it is going to render the steam engine obsolete. Certainly it is making wonderfully rapid strides in the engineering world. Its inventor states that large groups of oil engines will be used within the next decade to generate electricity in bulk, preferably in the neighborhood of the oil wells or tha.coalfields, which can be made to yield a suitable oil by a simple process of distillation. He is quite sure that this arrangement will give cheaper power than can be produced by hydraulic installations except under particularly favorable conditions. Dr. Diesel may be optimistic, but he is an authority of the, very highest standing. Undoubtedly he is helping materially to "bopm" oil and the Taranaki .people ought to regard him as a good friend.—Lytelton Times.