Abstract
THE occurrence of petroleum in Burma, and its technical exploitation have, in a recently published volume, been very fully treated by Dr. Fritz Noetling, palæontologist to the Geological Survey of India (Mem. Geol. Survey India, vol. xxvii. part 2). The Yenangyaung oil-fields occupy an area of about 350 acres on the borders of the left bank of the Irawadir a few miles distant from the river. They have been known from time immemorial, while the methods of obtaining the oil at the present day differ but little from those of a hundred years ago. In 1855 there were about 130 productive wells; there are now about 600, together with six or seven bore-holes. The oil-field is situated in a low but rugged table-land which is intersected by numerous ravines, and the strata which yield the oil have been bent into a gentle domelike anticline. The strata consist of sands or soft sandstones, and shales of Tertiary ages overlaid by drift. The oil is held in the sandy beds, the thickest of which (though not the richest in oil) is a little over 130 feet. As many as ten bands yielding oil may occur in vertical succession; but water and petroleum occur independently in different beds, or in the same layer, and in the latter c.ise the petroleum generally rests on the water.
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W., H. Petroliferous Sands and Mud Volcanoes in Burma. Nature 58, 20–21 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058020a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058020a0