G
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1937.
Good Company
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and-
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OF GREAT ACC
Dewar & Son
DISTILLERS
131
PER
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The Best of _Good_Spirits
A. S. WATSON & CO., LTD.
G.&.C.
REGO TRADE MARK
ENGLAND
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.York Building
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"Whiz" Drilling For Oil
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Hongkong Hotel Garage
N
England
In
When the drill is hauled up for changing, the pipe is taken to pieces in sections of three lengths-90 ft. at a time. These The top section of the drill is are stacked inside the derrick,
a smooth, green, the risk," said one member of tackle from which depends the slumberous stretch of the company. "With a worse drill.
risk we wouldn't have sunk the Sussex, so peaceful well. With a better risk—well, that the four cottages in you can't get much better risk
a square shaft which fits into a resting on the platform, with view seem deserted, there in oil."
The plant is costing about square hole in the drum. As the their upper ends near the der rises, slender, soaring, a
4100 a day to maintain. There drum rolates-at anything be- rick's top. miniature Eiffel Tower. From a platform 15 feet up its 137 fect of height comes the sound of machinery.
a day.
CLANG --- growl — growt growl-CLANG—growl-growt grol-CLANG .. Ceaseless- ly, interminably. For 24 hours
They are drilling for oil. Some millions of years ago the Sussex would was green with sea water instead of grass, With Tel. 27778/9 Stubbs Road the tidal recession that cut Bei
tain off from the Continent, myriads of shell-fish were left on the new dry land. They seeped into the strain of shale that in- terleave other rocks below the surface.
Showroom
The
hongkong Telegraph.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1937.
A SHORT-SIGHTED
POLICY
With the incredible pressure through time of the contractions of the earth they turned to fossils. Marine plants, too, have turned to fossils. And it is the belief of scientists that oil is formed by the decomposi- tion of these organisms.
Another condition is necessary
I. in her policies towards for the production of oil in bulk": China, moral considerations do a "wrinkle" in the crust of the not carry great weight with earth in which it can collect, Japan, one would have thought that the materialistic factor,
***
of ac-
The great oil magnates of the represented by trading op-world, with their cohorts of ex- portunities, would have been ports and their army sufficient to exercise a restrain-tuaries, have determined in cold ing influence 'ou those elc- figures that the present known ments which adhere to the doc-sources of supply of petroleum trine of force for the settlement oil in the world will be exhausted within 50 years or less. So of disputes between the two they are searching the earth for nations. Business men in potential new supplies. Japan must thoroughly realise Geologists are the detectives. that the methods at present be- in this world-wide hunt. They ing employed will ruin looked over Britain, where odd farmers reported streaks of oil commerce for many years to
on the surface of their wells. come. Japan's own prosperity They found in the South the depends on pence in China. Wealden Arch, a gigantic wrinkle Sir Eric Teichman has done well spanning the ancient "Palaeozoic to point out that Britain, and Floor." They said: "Here is a the United States have always good chance to find oil in Bri-
tuin." aimed at the creation of a
the arch.
And so the little Eiffel Tower -actually a derrick-rises be- tween Springhum Wood and No- body's Wood, in the
green Sussex Weald,'
Certain facts the drillers-the Anglo-American Oil Company- know: they know that
the
Palaeozoic Floor-the ancient rock formation that forms the basis of the whole continent of Europe-is, at this point, be- tween 4,000 and 5,000 feet below: the surface.
and re-
in a staff of about 30 men em- tween 80 to 200 revolutions a Each 90ft. picce is hauled up. ployed; some of them highly minute, according to the type of by the tackle swinging in the
killed; others local labourers. rock one is going through at the centre of the derrick, Seven men work on the "rig”— moment-the drill rotates. placed by the same means when the derrick--at a time. There The actual drilling instrument the drill goes down again. are three shifts a day, going all may be either "fishtail" or "rock- They reckon to get through out for eight hours.
metal divided in the centre. One an average of 100 ft. to 30011, in A two-cylinder 12in. by 12in, half is flanged forwards, one half 24 hours. By the end of this engine, fired by three 100 h.p. backwards. On the two bindes month they will know finally and boilers, drives a horizontal drum thus formed, a resident welder decisively whether they have on the derrick platform. Four puts a crenellated insert of tung- spent £15,000 or £20,000 for no- great chains, surprisingly loose, sten carbide-the hardest sub- thing or not. rattle and bang as the engine stanco known save diamonds To pay, an oil well must pro works: Suspended from the and covers this with a top dress- duce at least 15,000 tons of oil peak of the derrick, crowned ing of steel with a wedge-shaped through its life. It is loaded with the Union Jack, 137ft. edge.
into barrels each holding above the ground is a block and
35
As the drill rotates the steel gallons. wears away, leaving the tung- To prevent the hole getting sten points like jagged teeth, choked steel tubes are sünk to These, too, wear away in time, line the walls. To keep water When the drill gets blunt the from forcing its way in con- whole thing is hauted up and a crete is forced between the outer new blade attached. This hap- surface of the hole itself. pens two or three times in 24 One of the gravest dangers in drilling is the fracture of a
hours.
a cR8Q For hard rock, such as lime. pipe or drill. In such
the drill-end stone, the rock-bit is used: a special tools on complex arrangement of tripli fish for the fragments in the cate toothed wheels of steel. The impenetrable subterranean dark. life of such a bit is two days; This is a real danger. Such a the cost, £25. After use it is fracture may hold up work for thrown away-the metal is too six months. Consequently they
never drive the drill too fast. "tired to be retempered.
cake.
From time to time, to take a sample of the rock, a "core drill"
And before you condemn is attached to the shaft. This these oil-drillers as defacers of takes a cylindrical chunk out of the countryside, money- grub- the earth, much as an empty bers destroying beauty, apos- cocoa tin, pressed down into a tles of a materialist civilisation, cake and withdrawn, would take bear in mind that to get you a a cylindrical section out of the couple of gallions of petrol for your car or a drop of oil for your The resident geologist inspects bicycle, these men take their the chunk and keeps in n shed lives in their hands. There is a permanent record of the strata heroism as well as industrialism which have already been pierced. in the oil game. The first core was taken at a Though smoking is ruthless- depth of 118 feet.
ly forbidden near the drilling, At the surface of the earth there is enough steel lying about the hole in the ground is 22 to generate a spark as metal inches across. Further down it strikes metal. There needs only gets smaller, for they fit smal- to be a strike of oil for it to ler drills.
gush upwards. to meet such a As the drill bites its way into sparic. and the whole rig is in. the earth mud-just plain mud danger of going up in flames. -is forced down with it. The First-class equipment cuts the mud acts as a lubricant; it sof- risk to a minimum. tens the rock which the drill
AL- So the gamble goes on.
is piercing; and, by an hydrau- ready two drillings—one at Hon- lic system, it is forced up inside field, Sussex, another near Ports- the drill and carries with it the mouth-have been tried without particles of crushed rock which success. If the one at Hellingly the drill has displaced.
fails, they will sink a well eight Above the drill as it descends miles from Edinburgh. But, are fixed pipes in 30ft. lengths, as I left the rig with its rending These are cylindrical. They are noise and desolate mud-tanke, inserted between the aquare and went back into the country, shaft held in the drum and the I wondered if success-even un- drill itself. Each section is attended by flaming tragedy- screwed on by hand, then tigh- might not cut the last two syil- tened by machinery.
ables from the hamlet's name.
Through the pipe rise mud and chips. Through it, too, will rise the oil-if and when found.
Guy Ramsey
A Bespectacled Nation
again, spectacles are no longer the handicap they were once considered.
soldier could be efficient.
More explorations, more cal- strong and stable Central culations were made. And Government in China, ruling a Grove Hill, near the village of united people. Japan, on the Hellingly (pronounce it Helling- other hand, has always sought lie); they determined was one of to deal with regional authorities the most promising points on when disputes arise, a policy Legal difficulties, political which strikes at the very roots problems had to be solved. In of the unity and stability of the 1934 an Act was passed grant- country. Despite the inumer-ing to certain stated companies able difficulties with which she the right to drill. has been faced. China has in recent years made marked pro- gress towards complete unity, but Japan, so far from assisting that process, has continued along the lines of seeking to separate one part of the country from another. Her latest ven- ture, however, is proving a boomerang, inasmuch as it is consolidating China as no other circumstance could have done, There is evidence everywhere of That is not much: there is one A RECENT experience of the stair
department of the London Under Seven People Out of The war showed that a spectacled strong support for the Central oil well in Texas 12,500 feet ground Rusiway suggests that Britain deep. They know that, if oil in is quickly becoming a nation of Government in its resistance to not found about the Floor, it will spectacled men and women,
A mon with deficient eyesight Japan's aggression, and 'it is not be found at all.
During the Coronation rush 700
wearing proper glusses is under few additional stuff were appointed, and
handicaps to-day. A few trades bre eloquent of world opinion that
Now, even as you read this, it was afterwards desired to make a
ba red to him, but he can play games, shoot, drive, and so on ns all the sympathy is with China they are drilling. Driving down- number of permanent appointments, Three hundred were sent for, the
well as his more fortunate brothers, in her hour of trial. From no ward through the earth, through sunt medical examination, and out out of 131 examined in another firm,
Unbreakable lenses have removed source, even the most jingoistic, sand and shale, limestone, sand- of these, 120 had to be written down 40 required glasses, and 40 already
cricket of playing such games 35 stone, slate, chalk, even bits of as fallures on the score of eyesight wearing spectacles required different
In glasses. Examples could policy approved wood in process of turning to very large percentage, but the im is Japan's
Superficially this may not seem a An estimate given by a responsible wear glasses,
be Biven of first-class cricketers who Spectacled players Relying on her own strength, coal, scanning the deposits portant point is that all the body after testing some millions of have appeared at Wimbledon. Japan still persists in defying brought up by the drill for traces pilcants were quite confident about people was that one person in three The visual abilities of a spectacled
opinion, but of the viscous fluid that is the their eyesight. They believed that required glasses, but it must be re-
was amongst mon or woman should be judged It was at least "good" or they would membered that this having gone so far, it is difficult basis of modern-transport.
not have applied, as the sirletness men and women who suspected they when they are wearing glasses. In to visualise her drawing back It is a gamble: a gigantic gum- of the test is a matter of common had deffelent eyesight and went for many cases their night is better thun that of others with slight deficiencies ble. The odds, are 10 to 1 knowledge.
which are unsuspectedt. from the venture upon which
against. "Fair odds. Worth she has embarked. Her
recruits who were inspected at the Not Much of a Handicap methods have inevitably
An estimate that seven people out between December and May last 350 heightened such anti-Japanese
1937 were rejected on the score of of ten have imperfect eyesight has falled to read an Identification plate sight. The War Onice ex-been made. But if the number of of a car at 25 yards. It is safe to feeling persisted in China; materially by her tactics, for, flat is not as strict in tint of men and women with first-class cyc- say that they were people without here, again, it is cause for won-even if hostilitics were soon to the Underground railways. Again, sight is steadily decreasing, the post-glasses who had not noticed their generally speaking, belleved them- First of all, we have to remember had not had their lenses changed as that the left behind such a residuo of re-selves nt for the Army. The 11 per that, millions of cuses of deflelent their eyesight altered, not, or will not, see very movement against which sentment amongst the people of cent, is 11 per cent. of our fittest cycalght are recognised and treatedl
to-day, whereas 50 years ago they The Trouble Begins at School they inveigh is fostered rather | China as to make the resump-
Even more starting are the figures might not have been found.
tes LA In factorles. A On the road, in offices and for- Many experts believe that the than otherwise by the use of the tion of normal trade in the near secured by
report last year showed that out of torles, and even in the home we use trouble starts at school. School-. big atlck.. Beroft of moral sup-future a most unlikely contin- iad employees examined in one firm, our eyes for close work much more children to-day read much more than:
(Continued on Page 4.) 01 were found to require glasses, and than our grandfathers did. Then, port, Japan stands also to lose 'gency.
you down adverse world
Solo Agents:
Eleven out of every 100 of the
Central London recruiting depot dur- ing the months December 1936-May
Ten Have Defective
lenses.
n test.
Vision
The eyesight test required of motorists la exceedingly simple, yet.
THE CENTRAL derment that Japan's leaders do come to an end, there must be one must remember that the recruits, tion is not so bad as it might appear, short sight, or spectacle wearers who
TRADING CO.
Bank of Canton
Building.
young men.