Oil in the Bush

Oil-hungry Australia spends more than $250 million a year to import petroleum, an outlay that hardly pleases its export-minded government. Alarmed by this drain, Australia began subsidizing oil exploration six years ago, has since spent more than $45 million sending drill and rig out across its vast uncharted continent, often to the amazement of its aborigines and the terror of its kangaroos. More than 100 companies and syndicates now hold permits to look for oil in Australia. Such firms as Union Oil of California, Shell, Texaco, Delhi-Taylor and Kern County Land have so far drilled more than 700 wells, and four months ago Jersey Standard set up Esso Exploration Australia as a preliminary to joining the hunt. Last week two other big U.S. oil companies, Sun Oil and Continental Oil, entered the search, establishing a venture called Australian Sun Oil Co.

Though many geologists are convinced that Australia's substratum contains plentiful oil, the continent has so far had only one big strike; it came 21 years ago in the Moonie fields of Queensland, where a consortium of Union, Kern County and Australian Oil & Gas hit a field that is expected to produce up to 10,000 bbl. per day this year. Actually, the searchers have lately been finding a great deal more natural gas than oil. Gas finds have been made in western Victoria, New South Wales and in South Australia. A combine made up of Delhi-Taylor and Santos, Ltd. has struck two wells 500 miles north of Adelaide with a potential flow of 30 million cu. ft. per day, and last week the Australian-owned Associated Group struck its 21st gas well in the Roma region of Queensland. Associated is already talking of a 280-mile pipeline to carry gas to Brisbane's burgeoning and power-hungry industry, and of a petrochemical complex for making products that could range from fertilizer to plastics.

The main prize, of course, is still oil, and the gas strikes have convinced Australian oilmen that it is there, since oil is often found in the ground beneath gas pockets. The only sour note comes from Australia's coal industry, which is afraid that oil and gas would steal its market for generating power. Plentiful petroleum, warns Australian Coal Association Chairman Sir Edward E. Warren, could "destroy the indigenous coal industry on which whole communities depend." The complaint puts some politicians in the unusual position of refereeing a fight between coal and oil before an oil industry even exists.

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