Shell Co. To Drill For

Oil In Queensland

rE Shell Company’s four-year plan, to spend £1,000,000 in four years in exploration and drilling activities over an area of nearly 50,000 square miles in Queensland has been approved T3V the Queensland Government.

This search for oil will be undertaken by She!! (Queensland) Development Pty., Ltd. (a Shell subsidiary). Before opera tions were suspended by the war, exten sive exploration work had been carried out, involving geological mapping, geo-

physical and topographical surveys, and aeriel photography, at a cost of £250,000.

This followed the previous activities of the Shell Co. in Papua, where nearly £500,000 was spent in vain in prospecting for oil over a wide area, including the Fly River and the Western Delta area.

Shell still has confidence that the prospects of finding oil within the Com monwealth are worth invesigation to the tune of one milion pounds. The funds will be found entirely by Shell, its geolo gists, geophysicists, palaeontologists and surveyors will use the latest proven scientific oil field technique.

The scout drilling campaign, about to commence, involves drilling thirty test holes, with an aggregate depth of 50,000 feet, to determine accurately the best site for deep test drilling. The most modern drilling plant in use overseas will be used.

The scout drilling will be followed by deep drilling which is expected to reach the depth of 10,000 feet, by far the deepest well ever undertaken in Australia and which alone may involve expenditure of £600,000.

As a result of an appeal to the Noumea Court of Appeal, two out of three young men given suspended imprisonment sen tences with costs for having fraudulantly taken possession of drums of benzine at Vila, New Hebrides, have had their (sus pended) sentences somewhat lightened.

They are jointly to pay damages to the extent of 19,670 francs in Condominium currency sales tax fees, instead of the 124,000 francs in tax charges imposed by the Vila Court. Apparently they had got away with a lot of “juice.”

Dr. T. J. K. Jamieson, formerly of Mel bourne, is now Condominium Medical Officer in the New Hebrides He succeeded Dr. A. S. Frater, who was appointed prin cipal of the Central Medical School, Suva.

Areas of Oil Search in Queensland.