PETROLEUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 155, 18 November 1912, Page 5

PETROLEUM.

OIL NOTES. An Austrian oil expert leaves London to-day for New Plymouth to superintend the operations of a company controlling a good deal of Sydney money that ha» been recently formed to prospect for petroleum in the New Plymouth district. Three complete and up-to-date boring rigs are being shipped at the same time. The third payment in connection with the purchase of the company will be made to the liquidators of the Taranaki Petroleum Company early this week, nid a further distribution to the shareholders will follow as soon as possible afterwards. The whole of the refinery plant and rotary drilling plant has been taken delivery of by the Taranaki Oil Wells, Limited, with the exception of the still bottoms, which will ,be carted to the site to-day. Moturoa now presents a very busy appearance. THE OIL STEAMER. Bv virtue of his experience of oil steamers in the Malayan Archipelago, Professor Maemillan Brown last week prophesied to a Wellington Times reporter that in twenty years' time all steamers would be driven by oil, and that before we died all steamers would be funnelless. The professor travelled bv some ot these oil steamers, and was charmed by them. Only a junior engineer was required to see that the spray did not get choked in the place of a numb r <if fir. 1 men on coal steamers. The engines required cleaning only once a year, and by simply connecting up a hose on the wharf fuel for two months could be taken on board in two hours'""" time. Further, the Netherland Packet, Navigation Company was building two steamers (without funnels) of 4000 tons each to be driven by internal combustion engines. At one place in Borneo there was a whole mile of tajiks and refineries, and the '"Shell" Company was building a pipe eighty miles long to new wells. The present one was forty miles in length. Altogether, the oil industry 1 was going ahead, but so far the resources of three islands only—Borneo. Java and Sumatra—were being developed.