THE ROMANCE OF OIL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10044, 14 May 1910, Page 4

THE ROMANCE OF OIL.

Quite a world of enthusiasm has been created by the announcement of Sir Marcus Samuel that the largest supply of oil in the world exists at Sarawak. Taken in conjunction with the fact that the Cunard Company is building its latest leviathan to burn oil fuel, and that theßntish Navy has declared in favour of oil, the remark is very significant. It would seem at first sight almost surprising that in these progressive times some means had not been found by which oil fuel could be used even more generally than at present, in warships at any rate. It is true that the difficulty of preventing it from giving off a rich black smoke when forced draught is used is a disadvantage for naval purposes; but if that had been the chief difficulty it would not have barred modern ingenuity for very long. The great objection to the use of oil—or, at any rate, to building vessels with furnaces and tanks specially planned for the burning of oil-fuel alone—has been the limit of the supply of oil. The British navy alone buys from the twenty-tour colleries on the Admrialty list about one million tons of steam coal a year in peace time. In war it would need a great deal more than that; and, unless there were enormous supplies of oil at many points where the fleets could conveniently call, it would be dangerous to trust to any great extent to oil fuel for large warships, even if it were more and more used for the merchant service. This is the one main consideration that has so far limited the use of oil as fuel, and it is only because new oil-fields have been found that the Cunard Company has decided to use it, that the navy is now experimenting with it, and that its general use is now predicted. It is only in the light of all these facts that the statement of one of the biggest oil magnates of the day, that the largest supply of oil in the world exists in a British protectorate, comparatively close to these shores, can be appreciated. If it amounts to this—that there is a chance that within no great distance of time the world's greatest oilfields may have attained the position which the world's greatest coalfields now hold—then there is not any much more important fact on the horizon of the Pacific to-day.