The Oil Wealth Of Dutch New Guinea

From Our Own Correspondent

Hollandia, March 2.

)N the most westerly corner of the Vogelkop Area, in Dutch New Guinea, lies a small town : great importance: Sorong.

Sorong, also called “the oil town,” ot long ago was only a small mis onary outpost. Now, it is one of le most important ports of D-NG, ‘cause from there flows the “black )ld” (oil) out of heavily-jungled rritory. For the time being Sorong the only important exporting wn in D-NG.

The company which brought Drong to its new importance is ie Netherlands New Guinea Petro am Company, a trust formed by ree international oil companies.

One of the first steps taken by is company was to make thousands aerial photographs of their con ssion. That was in 1935. A little ore than a year later, at Klamono. e first well was giving up its lack gold.” By now, the Klamono ;ld has a production of some 750 ns of oil per day.

Because the Klamono wells are about 30 miles’ distance from the rt of Sorong, the Co, constructed road between the two places, png which a pipe-line for oil was id, to pump the oil to the docks.

The Co. now has two more new l-wells in eastern Vogelkop: at asian and at Mogoi.

However, millions upon millions of guilders have had to be and are still being invested in the con cession; and these expenses can only be recovered after years of fruitful exploitation.

It is said that Dutch-New Guinea possesses more oil than Borneo and Sumatra (in the Indonesian archi pelago) put together. Although this has still to be proved, it never theless is clear that, because of the urgent need for oil in this highly mechanised world, this part of New Guinea is likely to take an import ant place among the oil-producing areas of the world.