OIL PROSPECTING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 41, 18 February 1939, Page 10

OIL PROSPECTING

ARTIFICIAL EARTHQUAKES CHARTERING THE SUBSTRATA ( Per Press Association.] AUCKLAND. Feo. 17. The creation of artificial earthquakes in potential oil-bearing territories constitutes some of the work to be done in the Taranaki oil territory within the next three years byMr. R. C. Clark, physicist in the employ of the Standard Oil Company of America, who arrived by the Monterey. He will have charge of a seismological party that is to arrive shortly to undertake surveys on the west coast of the North Island. Since he graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1927, Mr. Clark has specialised in this ciass of work and with teams of scientific earthquake makers, he has traversed the oilfields of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and many other States. The experi <ice he has gathered in his own country he will use in Taranaki on behalf of the New Zealand Petroleum Company Limited and within a short time he and his crew of 16 men will begin operations. The general idea behind the seismological work to be done was the staging of miniature earthquakes by setting off small charges of dynamite at various depths. He explained that the vibrations set Up by the concussions travelled through earth and were reflected from certain formations such as limestone and recorded on a special equipment used for that precise purpose. Data gather'd in this way enabled him to say’ what geological structures lay beneath the ground surface and to determine their locations. This was an essential part of modern prospecting methods since there must be some form of geological structur? forming the reservoirs for oil accumulations. Drilling for oil had ceased to be a haphazard process, he continued, definite technique had been laid down as the result of almost unceasing experiments and the principle to be followed in Taranaki would be in accord with that practised abroad. So far as he knew his party would be the first of its kind in the Dominion. ‘Tn no sense do we discover nil,” Mr. Clark concluded. “We merely locate subterranean structures favourable to the accumulation of oil. As soon as apparatus arrives from the United States next month we shall get to work.