Taranaki Petroleum.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 May 1906, Page 161

Taranaki Petroleum.

After a long period of abortive pioneer work, those responsible for the oil-boring operations in the Taranaki district have at last demonstrated to their own satisfaction, and to a people appreciative of enterprise, that petroleum is present in fair quantities in that part of the North Island. Something approaching a mild boom has already set in on 'Change —^s shares selling at a premium of £9 — an d, generally speaking, the district has been " enthused " to a high degree over the discovery. Enthusiasm on a large scale prevailed during the late " fifties " in the United States on the discovery of oil by E. L Drake in Venango County, Pennsylvania. The district known as the " oil regior " there was quickly transformed from an almost unbroken forest into camps and towns, m which fortunes were made in a day, and often as quickly squandered. Many wells yielded nothing, others lasted but a short time, while others gave enormous quantities of oil. But the chief difficulty surrounding oil fields has so far been found to exist in the knowledge that they are constantly changing — new ones being discovered, or old ones failing— and there is just a possibility that the geological aspect of the question may have been overlooked m the excitement which recently prevailed m Taranaki. A few bores would be commercially useless, and the constantly changing strata of the ground being liable to divert the oil from one place to another, a mint of money would be required, not only to produce the refined oil, but to place it in open competition with the American article.