16,000,000,000

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 814, 4 March 1955, Page 13

16,000,000,000

Petroleum has been known to mankind from time immemorial. Through the ages it has contributed to the advance of civilisation. Noah’s Ark was caulked with mineral pitch. The ruins of Babylon and other cities show to this day the way in which bitumen was used as mortar. Thousands of years ago the ancients in every continént scooped oil from seepages appearing on the earth’s surface and used it for heating, lighting, road making, building and for preserving the dead. Gradually man learnt to dig shallow wells in places where natural seepages appeared. But not until advances in technical science gave him the necessary equipment could he go on to positive production of oil.

The First Drilling...

made for the exptess purpose of finding oil was carried out 95 years ago, in 1859, by Drake at Titusville in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. The enterprise was successful. It marked the beginning of the modern petroleum industry. With his primitive drilling rig, Drake

took two months to reach a depth of 69 feet where oil was found. Since that historic day thousands of oil companies, operating tens of thousands of wells, have produced 16,000,000,000 tons of crude oil. It would take three and a half years for this vast quantity of oil to flow over the Huka Falls. Behind this impressive figure lies almost a century of tireless labour, of disappointments and failures, as well as many fine successes. Thorough study of all problems related to the theory and practice of drilling, technical knowledge ripened by years of experience — gained at all points of the compass and under all climatic conditionshave contributed to these successes. Today oil well drilling has become a specialised branch a engineering.

Over Eight Thousand...

oilfields and more than 400,000 producing wells serve the world. Some of these wells, when new, flow many thousand barrels a day. But most of them are small, pumping five, ten or twenty barrels a day. The world relies on the’ efficient recovery of oil from the small wells for the "hard core"’ of its needs. Every year nearly 50,000 wells ate drilled. Many are "dry". In 1951, despite every care, in the United States alone, over 17,000 dry holes were drilled, representing 39% of the total new wells drilled in search of production. In Canada, one large oil company drilled 130 dry holes over a span of 28 years before discovering its first major field. In Ecuador, which showed great promise, £9 million was spent before the search

for oil was abandoned and the expenditure written off as a loss. Exploration is competitive, costly and hazardous. It is also necessary if world demand is to be fulfilled. Shell has played its part in all these developments. Its equipment is ranked among the most modern in the world. In Louisiana it operates the world’s deepest producing well, 18,568 feet -one and a half times deeper than Mount Cook is high. In the difficult Mississippi delta area, Shell is drilling by means of derricks mounted on floatimg pontoons. It is drilling in the open sea off Borneo and in the waters of the Persian Gulf. In the remote parts of the world its exploration teams search for new fields. With others, it has set itself the task of producing this liquid energy no matter how great the difficulties to be overcome — because oil is vitally necessary in our present-day society. SHE LL COMPA 2 of a series fa articles peers by THE OF N ALAND LIMITED Seat ts in ber