PETROLEUM NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 279, 28 April 1914, Page 5

PETROLEUM NEWS.

TREMENDOUS BLOW-OUT. AT ROTARY BORE. At about four o'clock yesterday after- - • noon the rotary bore of the Taranaki (N.Z.) Oilwells Company, Ltd., became violently active. There have been "blowouts" at this bore during the past ..few weeks,' but "oilology" must coin a new word to describe yesterday's ebullition. * It was stupendous, deafening and aweinspiring. A representative of the Daily News visited the bore. At a distance : of almost a mile, a dull roar gave promise that here was something without equal in the history of the common ox garden "blow-out" which the sceptic "s prone to regard as a "soaping of the geyser." On the derrick site the scene beggared description. Around the derricK itself the ground w \s slippery with mud, which trickled and oozed in all directions, some even iinding its way to the road outside the derrick site. But inside the derrick! Dante's inferno without the flames, a subterranean Bacchanalian riot in open revolt, a screaming challenge by the god who guards the oil seams against the unseemlv hand of man meddling with forces which, once invoked, lie cannot control. You cannot hear, you cannot see, you cannot bear in your ears the screaming roar of this ' subterranean giant, this unloosed fury of the unknown, shrieking his protest from 2400 feet below. The fumes of the gas are stifling, the noise oi the bore is deafeningthe derrick is a very good place to be out of. There is nothing to do, \n the manager remarks, but to let this fury wear itseifout, and feel thankf.il that it has an outlet, for its belchings through the sides of the upper derrick. Man with his feeble scratching*; has ventured into old niggard Nature's closeguarded secrets. She has revolted, and for the nonce man can only stand 'n fatuous wonderment at tho forces he h is let loose.

At nine o'clock last night the demonstration still continued wLth the same activity and deafening noise. No work could be done, and no one was allowed near the derrick owing to the fire risk. At the start, some twelve barrels of pure oil were ejected from the bore and were saved.

Mr. CaTter informed the News rcV ? r i P \. thftt during the last few da y s tho staff had been drilling in order to reach the oil seam. On Saturday the manager reported that the drill had paswd through the hard formation, and was entering a sticky stratum whicn led him to expect a strong gas exhalation before long. His expectations were eer- • tamly realised.