Search For Oil In Papua

How Earliest Discoveries Were Made

Part I.

A NUMBER of expeditions, hacked by powerful companies and subsidised liberally by British Governments, are now seeking an oilfield in Papua — and, probably, will succeed. This article, written by a resident of Papua, tells the story of the discovery of petroleum in the Territory, and of the subsequent at tempts at development. r T , tIE history of the search for oil in *• Papua is a long one.

Probably in no part of the world has so long an interval elapsed between the first discovery of petroleum and the proof, or disproof, of its existence in commercial quantities.

It was as far back as 1911 that two young men, Lewis Lett and Garnett Hop kin Thomas, both employed by an Eng lish Development Company in Papua, de cided that they could do better on their own account than by accepting wages; and they became partners, on a verbal agreement, in February of that year.

They had very little capital between them, but they left Port Moresby in March, 1911, intent on building up a coconut plantation of their own in the Gulf Division.

There were many difficulties to be faced, among which perhaps the greatest were continuous rain, malaria, lack of communications, and the necessity for dealing with an inferior type of natives who were making their first contact with Europeans. Health suffered, resources dwindled, and expensive mistakes were made during the first months in the rain saturated jungle. But by the middle of July a beginning had been made, a palm thatched house built, and the first few hundred coconuts planted on a 100-acre block of land not far from the village of Opa. on the Yailala River.

That was all very well as far as it went; but the partners were looking to the future. A 100 acres of coconuts, even in those days, was not enough to satisfy ambition, or to repay them for the ef fort and health that they were expending or for the long exile from civilisation.

With a permanent base to work from, they began to look for adjacent land on which they might extend their planting operations.

Hunting for land in Papua is not so simple as might be imagined. Every yard of the country in the rainy districts is covered by growth so dense that visibility

is commonly restricted to 10 or 12 yards.

Giant trees spread their thick canopy of leaves a 100 to 200 feet from the ground, shutting out the sky, and reducing day light to a heavy gloom.

Some of the trees rise clean and straight from the soil; others throw out huge flanges that rise to a height of 20 feet or more and cover an area of ground big enough to build a house on; others again throw down aerial roots that group to form impenetrable barriers; and the ground between the trees is crowded with saplings fighting strenuously for life and for the light and air that lie so far above them: by weedy shrubs and herbs whose growth is all upwards towards the light, and whose leaves are pitted and discol oured by diseases; and by cane and other vines that climb and tangle about the trees and about themselves and one an other, helping to form a mass of vege tation that is almost solid, and through which the traveller has to hack a way with axe and scrub-knife, seldom able to accomplish more than four miles In a day. and deeming himself lucky if. in the regions of the denser growth, he can put a mile behind him as reword for a full day of strenuous effort.

And when that has been done, it has to be remembered that the explorer Ims seen but little of the country through which he has passed. His vision being restricted to a distance of 10 yards, he has seen no more than a strip 20 yards wide and the length of his day’s .tourney.

Witlr'n 20 yards of his route there may be hills, creeks, variations of soil, of

which his day’s effort has told him nothing. There may be outcrops of rock or of sticky clay; or water-logged ground

that leads gradually downwards to an area of swamp.

ON a certain Sunday towards the end of July, 1911, the partners were not examining the land in small detail, but were maKing a running traverse thac would tell them whether the land they were covering was likeiy to repay closer examination. They were travelling as quickly as possible, in smgie file, follow ed only by their cook-boy, who carried their billy and packet of sandwiches, and cutting only so much of the mdergiowth as would enable them to push between the crowding saplings.

It was near time when the leader found himself in a section of the scrub that was strangely clear of under growth. The ground had an appearance of sourness, of sterility, as though some element in the soil refused to vegetable life the sustenance essential to its growth. Such few shrubs as grew there were weedy and stunted; the clay soil appeared greasy and of a greyish tinge; and the air was tainted by a strange scent not common to the Papuan jungle.

A tiny creek of fresh water suggested that this was a suitable place for lunch.

The soil being what it was, the two men felt no further interest in it. Even the strange scent failed to impress them; for the scrub is full of scents, mostly of an unpleasant nature. They waited pas sively until the water was boiling and their tea ready.

The tea, when it came, tasted of kero sene. The natural procedure was to blame the cook; and this the partners did with vim and point. They were well accustomed to his denials and excuses; but there was some quality in his pro tests this time that was less unconvin cing than usual.

They went to the bank of the creek and tested the water there. It tasted strongly of something akin to kerosene; and the slight foreign sugestion in its flavour aroused their curiosity.

And so the first indications of petro leum were found in Papua.

A little farther up the bank of the creek a slow flood of grey mud oozed

into the water. Following this up, a spot was found a few yards away where a slight mound was crowned by a small lake of grey mud with its surface a quiver. Round the edges of the lake was a thin deposit of brownish slime; and the surface of the pool was in tre mulous movement, like simmering water.

As they looked, a tiny eruption took* place in the centre of the pool. A quan tity of gas rose from the surface, lifting the surrounding mud with it in an en closing cone that burst and liberated the gas; and the cone of liquid mud fell back to agitate the surface anew. Again and again eruptions occurred, never twice in quite the same place, but all of ap proximate equal strength.

A lighted torch soon proved that the liberated gas was inflammable. The gruesome task of tasting the mud proved that it carried the same flavour as the water of the creek, but much stronger, more oily, and generally loathsome. And in addition to its oiliness it carried a distinct flavour of salt.

That was all that there was to go on, and it was not very much for men who had no special knowledge of petroleum.

But it was enough to set their imagina tion on fire, and to start them on a ser ies of investigations that was to occupy them for months, cost one of them his life, and involve the other in financial and other difficulties that were to last over many years.

But of such things the partners knew nothing as yet. What they did know was that they had discovered something that they believed to be. petroleum.

But they had discovered it under con ditions that gave them no certainty. Mud, eruptions of marsh-gas, and a smell of petroleum, could not be expected to con vince anybody that oil was present in quantities; and if the find was to be worth anything at all to them, they must first secure evidence much more definite and concrete.

They spent a good deal of time in care fully collecting the oily scum from the surface of the mud-pool; but the deposit was so thin that ten gallons of it, col lected in tins and allowed to settle, yielded only a thin film of something like enough to oil to confirm their own opin ion, but too impure and too meagre in quantity to convince any analyst. The rest was mud, unavoidably picked up with the oil film; slimy grey mud that smelt of petroleum, but that carried no proof in itself, and did little to support the theory that they built upon the greenish-brown film of oil and upon the certainty that possessed their own minds.

THE obvious first step was to find out whether other similar indications existed. Perhaps somewhere beneath the dense carpet of tree-tops that covered the country for thousands of square miles about them there might be a richer show, an outcrop of rock, a jet of gas from the rock itself instead of this inter mittent bubbling through a lake of mud that obscured the origin of the gas; pos sibly even a small seepage of pure oil itself under conditions where it could be collected and preserved.

Native information would have told them most of what they wanted to know,

and it would at least have led them dir ectly to other spots in which similar phenomena existed.

But native information was witheld.

As has happened so often in savage countries, the fear of the native popula tion was aroused that the arrival of white settlement might spell the end of native independence. Areas of jungle might be cleared, hunting grounds des troyed, and the freedom and stability of native life and the unquestioned author ity of the older men be threatened by this invasion of new customs, by the dazzle ment of new and fascinating trade goods, and by the attraction that is offered in every part of the world by the present ment of something hitherto unknown.

In any case, hative information was witheld. Talk, bribes, the promise of re ward, all in turn failed to shake the determination of the older men to pre serve the happy status that had been known to them all through their lives, and to their fathers and grandfathers before them. The only course that re mained open to the partners was to find out for themselves.

It was no light task. As has been pointed out, a thorough examination of the Papuan bush is a matter for much time, patience and labour. A great deal of each might be saved by noting the dip and strike of the rock at the site of the first discovery: and they devoted a couple of days to clearing the overburden

from the underlying rock, and noting as exactly as possible the dip and strike at different points. These coincided closely, and the two men were able to begin the long search.

Not only did the local natives withold all information, but they also did their best to withhold labour; and in the end the two white men were reduced to cut ting their own lines through the dense scrub on compass bearings that agreed with the strike, hacking a way hour after hour and day after day through the dense tangle of shrub and thorn and knotted vine, making frequent excursions from the line to examine the country on either side of it; while far behind each of them lagged a group of unwilling carriers, re luctantly bringing up the stores and cam ping gear to the end of each day’s newly cut line.

The men worked independently, one following the line of strike towards the west and south, the other working north wards in the direction of the dip in the hope of finding the outcrop of another stratum in that direction.

TT was a miserable job. At dawn, they rose from their stretchers and emerged from the suffocation of close-mesh mos quito nets to a strident drone of myriad mosquitoes, dragged on damp c'otlrng and began the dreary day’s cutting in the wet gloom of the jungle.

An hour later, there was a break for an unhappy meal of tea and damper flav oured by whatever tinned atrocity hap pened to be handiest; then a resumption of the monotonous slashing through undergrowth that dr’pped moisture in cessantly.

In the dank atmosphere of the satur ated bush sweat remforced the vapour that rose from the soaked ground, and clothes hung heavy and clammy. Lungs ached from the continuous inhaling of the steamy air; limbs ached from the unremitting effort; eyes ached from con tinuous straining in the dim light, ren dered dimmer by the clouds that hung overhead incessantly and dropped their burden of moisture dismally upon the oozing clay that formed the surface.

Inevitably, health suffered under con ditions so onerous; malarial fever seem ed to leave no intervals; chill, exhaus tion, impaired sleep, malnutrition, all played their part; and when the partners met again after more than a month of the devitalising work, they were out wardly not much more than emaciated skeletons, yellow, gaunt, and bent; but still burning inwardly with a fever of ambition that would give them no rest. *"pHE results were not very startling to date. To the south-west, two more sets of indications had been found; one a few miles inland from the big village of Oro kolo, five miles from the starting point, and the other 12 miles away, near the most easterly mouth of the Purari River, and some four miles from the coast. But. although the gas-jets were vigorous, the smell pronounced, and the same film of oily scum in evidence as at the first site, they still offered nothing mord definite than had been found before.

To the north. Thomas had penetrated

for 20 miles, and had found nothing more than an outcrop of sandstone with mud stone inclusions on the bank of the Vail ala River itself. As these rocks were similar to those at the site of the first discovery, the partners decided to make the outcrop the starting point for a sec ond search.

The journey up river by canoe was comparatively pleasant. The sun shone warm and strong, and, if its heat was excessive, it was at least a welcome change from the deadly wetness of the last few weeks.

The outcrop itself did not tell them much, except that the series of rocks that they believed to be oil-bearing spread over an area of country satisfac torily wide. They camped a hundred yards below it, on the bank of the river, and on the following morning cut into the .scrub immediately behind the camp.

'T'IIEY had not far to go. In less than * an hour they recognised the now familiar smell. Almost simultaneously, the undergrowth began to thin, and the soil to take on the greasy appearance that they knew so well. In the silence of the bush, a queer bubbling sound made itself heard, and a moment later a pool of grey mud came into view.

It was similar to what they had seen before, but longer and wider. There was the same green-brown scum round its edges, the same uneasy quivering of the surface. But, in place of the one gas-jet that spouted intermittently and moved from place to place, there were four distinct fountains of gas that flowed steadily, making oily bubbles and waves of viscous mud that moved outwards in rings so that the whole surface of the poll quivered continuously.

But still, tantalisingly, there was no cleared evidence of oil than the other discoveries had given. They collected samples of the mud and of the scum that ringed the pool, and moved on.

A little creek ran near the pool, cas cading its way from higher ground down towards the river, and they followed its course. It was a succession of diminutive falls and quiet pools, some four feet wide and with sandstone rock appearing in many places. In one such pool, where a fallen tree lay rotting:, there were wavering lines of prismatic colours. To the obsessed minds of the two men this hinted at oil.

They stopped and looked carefully round, and at last they had it.

From a tiny crevice in the sandstone oil seeped slowly, spread over the face of the rock for a few square inches, and slid quietly on to the surface of the water.

The real thing! And in surroundings that justified to the full the conviction that had siezed them at their first sight of the grey mud pool near the plantation. Oil on the surface of the creek. Oil seeping from the rock above it. And there, on the opposite bank, was a jet of gas coming clean and Unimpeded by mud, from the dry soil above the creek.

The evidence was not to be doubted.

But the quantity of the flow was incred ibly small. In four hours no more than a few drops had been collected; and throughout the whole of the next day an amount accumulated that could hardly overflow a teaspoon.

But the oil was there —not enough for analysis, certainly not enough for any sort of chemical test, but enough to es tablish a claim and to prove, short of the endorsement of chemists, that the discovery of oil in Papua was something more than a dream.

With something definite to report, one of the partners walked the 30 miles to the nearest Government station, at Ker ema, to report the occurrence of oil, and to claim protection and whatever rights they might possess as discoverers.

TT was disconcerting to find that the mining laws of Papua held no pro vision for petroleum, and that beyond registering their claim there was nothing to be done. The matter could not be permitted to rest there; and Lett went on to Port Moresby, leaving Thomas to extend his prospecting to new areas.

Reporting at Port Moresby had little more effect than reporting at Kerema.

There was no sort of legislation that could cover the discovery of oil, and it was made plain that no law would be passed in so important a matter until the wishes of the Commonwealth Govern ment had been clearly expressed.

There was nothing to be done but to go on to Melbourne. The slender re sources of the partnership had been

severely taxed, but hints of the discovery had already leaked out, and it was a simple matter to borrow funds for the journey, and also to arrange credit with the Port Moresby firms for carrying on the work on the Vailala River.

But even in Melbourne there was no provision for the control of petroleum either in Papua or in Australia itself.

There were even Cabinet Ministers who looked vacant when petroleum was men tioned, and one highly-respected Senator

wanted to know whether the oil was ob tained from the ground or from trees.

The Hon. Josiah Thomas, who was Minister for External Affairs in that pre war Cabinet, was quite frank about his complete ignorance on the subject, and in reply to the discoverer’s suggestion that the sole rights to prospect for oil in Papua should be reserved to him and his partner for a period of two years, the Minister protested that in Cornwall, England, where he had passed his youth, men were mining for tin on claitns of a quarter of an acre each!

The disparity between the two esti mates was reduced by degrees, but, since all the eagerness for compromise was felt by the Minister, who also held all the cards, the result could not be anything but disappointing to the dis coverers.

After a month of waiting, Lett left Melbourne with a forecast of the legisla tion that would be passed by the Com monwealth. This provided that licenses over prospecting areas not exceeding half a square mile might be applied for. and that if oil were found in commercial quantities on such an area, leases of five acres each might be granted to the licensees for the purpose of boring, the lessees paying to the Commonwealth Government a royalty of five per cent on the value of the oil won.

The conditions were, of course, absurd.

But it has to be remembered that the time was short. The Labour Govern ment, under Andrew Fisber. made full allowance for the value of time to men who had an independent living to make, and within the short period of one month it was not possible to take reliable ad vice on the subject of mining for oil. The Question of granting a reward claim to the discoverers was reserved for later decision.

Bad as the conditions were, they at least gave a basis for working and a legal right to claims, and it was fairly obvious that, from their very inadequacy, the terms could only be temporary. (To be continued)