Buying Pacific

Britain Stop

Phosphate

By a Staff Writer

Because of rising costs, the British Government —one of the three partner governments of the British Phosphate Commissioners —has decided to stop buying rock phosphate from Ocean Island and Nauru.

AN average increase of 5A3.50 a ton for rock phosphate from July 1 was announced by the BPC in June. The Australian price of bulk superphosphate is now expected to be about $19.70 a ton—a rise of $2.20.

The commissioners attributed the price increase to additional royalties and Government levies in Nauru and Ocean Island, and higher production and freight costs caused by an ex treme weather cycle in the islands.

Under an agreement signed in London in 1919, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand are entitled to buy phosphate from Nauru for home consumption in the proportions of: Australia, 42 per cent.; Great Britain, 42 per cent.; and New Zealand, 16 per cent.

The same proportions apply on Ocean Island, but Britain has been taking less than lOp.c. in recent years.

More For Others

The discontinuance of phosphate purchases by Great Britain will mean that more phosphate will now be available (proportionately) for Aus tralia and New Zealand.

It will also mean that in future conferences on Ocean Island royalties between the BPC, Britain’s Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (of which Ocean Island is a part) and the Banaban landowners of Ocean Island, Britain should no longer be in the difficult position of having to fight on both sides of the fence.

The first conference at which the new state of affairs will apply is to be held in Wellington, New Zealand, in late July or early August.

At that conference, delegates from the GEIC and the Banaban land owners will form part of the British delegation in an effort to extract a higher sum in royalties and taxes from the BPC.

If successful, another conference will be held later to thrash out how

the increased proceeds are to be divided between the GEIC Govern ment and the Banabans.

Observers believe that Britain should have little difficulty in getting a “larger slice of the cake” for the GEIC and the Banabans at the Wellington conference.

But dividing it up afterwards to the satisfaction of both parties— particularly the long - disgruntled Banabans—will be a lot harder.

Possibilities

Reports by two phosphate experts on the possibilities of finding phos phate on land and on the sea floor around Australia and the northern islands were released in Canberra in June.

The reports were made to the Aus tralian Bureau of Mineral Resources by Dr. Tj. H. van Andel, of the

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California, and Dr. R. P. Sheldon, of the US Geological Survey.

Dr. Sheldon was not enthusiastic about the chances of phosphate in Australia, but he felt the best pros pects were in eastern Australia.

Dr. van Andel reported that the best underwater prospects for phos phate were, in order, off the North west Cape area of Western Australia, along banks and underwater ridges in the area from New Guinea to the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solo mons, and banks and platforms in the Coral Sea. In the Solomons and New Britain, deep levels, below 100 to 200 metres, would have to be explored.

Later in the month, Press reports said that geologists from the Con tinental Oil Co. had found indications of phosphate deposits in New South Wales and Victoria.