TARANAKI OIL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 8, 10 June 1913, Page 7

TARANAKI OIL.

ORIGIN OF THE DEPOSITS.

INTERESTING SPECULATIONS BY A SCIENTIST.

Christchurch, June 6.

Before the last meeting of the Canterbury Philosophical Institute, Mr. R. Speight gave an interesting address on the origin of the petroleum deposits recently located in Taranaki. Mr. Speight said that although the bores had only been sunk over an area of a few acres at Moturoa, near New Plymouth,, it was known that hundreds of square miles in Taranaki were petroleferous.

NQT OF VOLCANIC ORIGIN. Apart from the actual surface appearance of petroleum in the rocks at Moturoa, there was circumstantial evidence of a petroleum deposit over an area of country three miles wide and thirty miles long, running south-east from New Plymouth. Over the whole of this area gas. emanations were met with, and might be taken as an indication that petroleum was extremely likely to exist in the measures below. The existence of oil shale, also, was presumptive evidence of the existence of oil deposits. The lecturer said that he was not inclined to believe that the oil on these fields was of volcanic origin. No volcanic rock had been met with .in the borings at Moturoa, and it might be presumed that the rock at Moturoa, like the rock at Paritutu, was not of volcanic origin, although it was located in the midst of the area of volcanic debris surrounding Mount Egmont. DIFFERENT THEORIES.

He reviewed briefly the various leading theories regarding the origin of petroleum, including, the theory of Sir James Hector, who considered that petroleum had its source in the action of volcanic rocks, and the theory that the oil was the product of an organic origin, he said, was supported by the presence of sulplfur and of nitrogen in many of the world's oil deposits, but it was difficult to explain how much enormous quantities of the oil could be found in a com- . paratively small area. There might, however, have been conditions which would have been brought about a vast deposit of animal matter. The floor of the Black Sea, for instance, was covered for a depth of many feet with decaying or partially decaying animal matter. The Black Sea was of comparatively recent formation, and was connected with the Mediterranean only by one narrow strait, It had 110 deep-sea scavengers to absorb the dead fish that fell from the upper waters. It was necessary where the conditions precedent to the formation of an oil deposit, whatever they were, had been fulfilled, that something, should take place to trap the oil and protect it. Oil was found most frequently, io, Ame ; rica in places where the upper strata of the earth's crust had been pushed' upward and bent, leaving a hollow under the crown of the upheaval, in which,.the oil accumulated. The cause of such upheavals was in most instances probably the rising up for a volcanic plug. This was almost certainly the case with the oil deposits in . Mexico.

TARANAKI OIL OF MARINE ORIGIN.

The conditions in the neighborhood ot New Plymouth were entirely favoraine to the conservation of petroleum, and the probabilities were that the petro leum had its origin in decomposed marine animal matter. The papa formation which abounded in the district was full of organic matter, and an analysis of the brine found in the rocks bore out the general assumption of a marine origin. Tlie brine was in many ways dissimilar to sea brine, but its constituents suggested a marine origin.