Search For Oil

In N. Guinea

Australian Government Takes a Hand

From Our Own Correspondent

Canberra, May 29.

ULTRA-MODERN American equipment

will be used in an all-out drive to locate oil in Papua and New Guinea, according to an official announcement here to-day. It would be part of a national search for oil by Com monwealth authorities throughout Aus tralia and its Territories.

A report by one of the Federal Gov ernment’s leading technical officers (Dr.

H. G. Raggatt), says: “There are areas in New Guinea from which small quanti ties of oil have been produced and from which, therefore, it is possible that com mercial production will result.”

The Commonwealth Government has created in Australia a Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics which, under the direction of Dr. Rag gatt, will give special attention to the search for oil, based upon the latest geo logical and geophysical survey methods.

Last year the Commonwealth discon tinued the policy of direct financial assist ance to companies to drill for oil, and it will concentrate on regional geological and geophysical mapping. Detailed plans have been made since Dr. Raggatt and another Commonwealth expert, Mr. Ray ner, have returned from abroad. The latter believes that by using American methods there is a reasonable prospect of success being achieved in the search for oil and other minerals in Australia, Papua and New Guinea.

The search will start in the Kimberleys (north-west Australia) and will later ex tend to Paoua and New Guinea.

The official statement says that an out standing oil technologist (Mr. H. Temple Watts) will play a leading part in this search for oil. The Australian Govern ment is buying the latest pattern geo physical equipment to enable magnetic, gravimetric and seismic surveys to be made of potential oilfields in New Guinea and Papua.

Geological and geophysical maps will be published by the Bureau to encourage private companies to concentrate their resources on the most promising localities; but the Australian Government also will undertake scout drilling for oil, and will “supervise company activities in the in terests of national conservation.”

It was learned officially in Canberra to night that, despite the official assurance that the search for oil would “begin im mediately,” the search will be held up probably for some months, until machi nery arrives from America.

Editorial Note

rIS, of course, is consistent with Aus tralian Socialist Government policy.

Modern opinion now accepts the theory that certain instrumentalities which affect the whole people (water supply, electric power, post and tele graphic service, some forms of transport, for example) should be nationalised (Government-controlled). There is ar gument concerning the point at which nationalisation should cease and private enterprise should start. The argument will go on as long as the world is cursed with politico-economic theorists.

But there can be no argument about a pioneering activity like the search for oil. That belongs, essentially, to the

sphere of private enterprise. The neces sary initiative, effort and refusal to acknowledge defeat, which make the dif ference between success and failure, can be supplied by the profit motive—which, in turn, is based on something that is fundamental in the character of the human being, and, especially, of free men.

The search for oil can, of course, be carried out as a Governmental enterprise —but only if the taxpayers concerned are prepared to pay the heavy cost which in variably and inevitably attends all Gov ernmental enterprises. It will be only half as efficient and it will be twice as costly as private - enterprise—and (unless all the history of all Governmental enter prises goes for nothing) it will not have the same chance of success.