Oil prospecting in Taiwan has a long and chequered history. In 1817, long before the first oil strike by Drake in Pennsylvania in 1859, indications of underground oil deposits were discovered in Taiwan. Native inhabitants on the island in early 19th century used to dip up oily water from bubbling creeks below Mount Chu Huang Keng, near Miaoli county about 60 miles southwest of Taipei, and distilled oil with the simple, time-honored method of heating. The first oil well was dug on this island about a century ago, by a native called Chew-go. From his well of only ten feet deep near Mount Chu Huang Keng, he obtained about three gallons of crude oil a day.
This lucrative enterprise soon caught the attention of Governor Liu Min-chuan, the Manchu ruler on the island. In 1876, the Manchu government established a bureau of mineral oil on Taiwan and employed American technicians to start oil exploration in the Miaoli oil field. These efforts, however, met little success. When the Japanese seized the island from the Chinese Manchu emperor in 1895, they pushed oil prospecting on Taiwan to wider fields. During the half century of Japanese rule, a total of 251 wells were drilled and several main oil fields surveyed. When the Chinese government took back the island from the Japanese after World War II, it found oil exploration here already well begun.
Theoretically speaking, the island of Taiwan is endowed with all the three basic conditions conducive to the generating of underground oil. First, oil is found only in land where the ground is composed of marine sedimentary rocks. Millions of years ago, the land could very well be the bed of an ancient sea. Now buried beneath thick strata of rocks, the sediments rich in organic debris have been converted into petroleum by time and nature's alchemy. Sedimentary structures are sparsely scattered only in several lucky regions of the world. Here on Taiwan, geologists say 99.5% of the ground consists of sedimentary rocks. This finding is actually the basis of oil exploration on the island.
But oil, like water, will be flowing underground. It will not be concentrated in a small zone to make oil-well drilling economical unless the earth structure fits a special type. This special structure is called "anti-cline", shaped like a bowl placed up side down. It will trap up oil miles below the earth surface just as a cup will hold water. Before an oil well is drilled, the explorers must first find such an ideal spot. At many places in Taiwan, geological tests have registered quite a few "anti-cline" structures favorable to the drilling of wells.
However, to pump up oil from under thousands of feet of solid rocks would be next to impossible even if the prospectors have located the "anti-cline" spot. There must be an easy route through which the oil may be sucked up. So oil explorers will look for some signs, either natural gas, oily bubbling water, to indicate that the oil deposits are within reach.
"Eternal Fire"
Such a sign, technically known as an oil seepage, gives oil prospectors a clue as to where to drill a well. Oil seepages are readily found at several places on Taiwan. The most famous one is the "Eternal Fire" at scenic Kuantzu Ridge in southern Taiwan. For several centuries, natural gas has been gushing out from a cave on the ridge and bursting into the "Eternal Fire" behind a splashing water-fall. As legend goes, the "Eternal Fire" used to beam out to fishermen sailing in the Taiwan Strait, and guide them safely back home.
World geologists who have surveyed the island from top to toe are generally agreed that abundant oil deposits are hidden somewhere under the thick strata of Taiwan. Reports on the extent of oil reserve vary greatly. The most optimistic estimate puts the total potential oil deposits around half a billion barrels, sufficient for the island's own use for a century or so at the present pace of consumption. But more conservative men in CPC would not venture to offer such a promising prediction.
So far, hectic explorations by Chinese geologists and oil prospectors of CPC have been largely unrewarding. Several times in the last decade, false hopes were raised when oil or natural gas spurted out from newly-drilled wells. But these hopes were soon dashed as most of the oil producing wells were short-lived. Annual production of crude oil from the island's wells is roughly enough for one day's use only. Gasoline, diesel oil and jet fuel which feed Free China's vehicles and planes are distilled by CPC's refinery almost entirely out of crude oil imported from Kuwait, a British protectorate in the Middle East. But prospects are believed good.
Exasperating Job
Now studded along the tree-clad Mount Chu Huang Keng are some 100 oil wells, stretched over five miles of rugged terrain. Half of the wells are still emitting oil, though almost tricklingly. The other wells have been depleted after half a century of tapping. At a few wells, oil is flowing out by itself from steel pipes driven miles under the ground. But in most cases, a huge pump is installed to suck up oil from below. Usually, oil spouts out mixed up with natural gas and underground water. In a separation process, gas and water are kept aside and oil flows down-hill through pipelines to a nearby small refinery.
Oil prospecting is an exasperating, and often unrewarding job. The mountainous terrains in Taiwan tend to make the task even more strenuous. Here, Chinese oil explorers are grappling with an entirely different problem which has never bothered their counterpart in the Middle East. In the oil-rich Saudi Arabia and other Mideast lands, a well drilled almost anywhere will yield oil. If water flows out, it will be a godsend blessing. The situation in Taiwan is just the contrary. Everywhere you can pump out water, but rarely oil.
Before an oil well is actually drilled, contingents of Chinese petroleum geologists will clamber over every hill in the marked-off zone to seek a suitable spot, oftentimes on mountains untouched before by human footprints. With hammers and axes, they hack at slippery cliffs or dig fathoms down the ground to collect rock samples. Back in their laboratories, the geologists will analyze the rocks, studying the hidden fossils dating back to ages ago. The findings are often confusing and misleading, and more samples have to be searched for and brought back for analysis. Finally, these drab-looking rocks and million-year old fossils guide the explorers to a conclusion as to where to sink the drilling pipe.
The task is merely half begun. Engineers now take over the job and cut open a road through the rugged terrain for hauling bulky equipment, materials and supplies up the mountains. Here 20th century trucks and China's age-old conveyors - oxen - work side by side. Where trucks and jeeps can not pass, the oxen step in. Over unnegotiable precipices, the engineers will erect cable-car ways to pull up the equipment piece by piece.
Excitement and Drama
At the site, a towering derrick is first erected. Then power lines are thrown up, water sources secured, and motors and accessories fitted up. At last, the drill is thrusted into the ground. The engine is started; and slowly the drill begins piercing into the ground to usher in a stretch of sweating labor mingled with excitement and drama.
Petroleum geologists now take turns to watch around the clock and examine rock samples picked up from the well. Noisily, the drilling proceeds at a snail's pace, usually making not more than a couple of feet a day after the initial, easy-going period. Every 50 centimeters the pipe punches down, a special instrument is sunk through the pipe to cut up a piece of rock and pick it up. The rock is placed under a florescent test lamp. If the sample shines like a milky, illuminous body under the florescent box, the geologist will beam a smile. He knows oil is not far away. When more and more milky showings are registered, all workers will get excited. The explorers are then pretty sure they have not sweated in vain.
Usually, engineers and workers are hoisted uphill in cable-cars along a ramshackle, dizzy rail to oil wells thousands of feet above the sea level. In some oil fields, like Chu Tou Chi near Tainan, the cable-car route is so hazardous that many prefer to stay in temporary sheds atop the mountain rather than taking the daily two-hour risky trip up and down. The oil men of CPC up Mount Chu Tou Chi are perhaps the only inhabitants within a circle of 20 miles. Surrounding them are endless curves of foothills, seldom visited before by man except for oil exploration. Daily supplies for the oil men, from rice down to every piece of toilet paper, are fetched from Tainan 40 miles away. In typhoon seasons, the workmen are often marooned up the mountain for weeks after the strong gales snap the electricity lines, cutting off their only cable-car link with the outside. Almost the year round, they have to guard against an insidious enemy - the tropical poisonous snakes which are teeming in the mountains. A bite by any of the small, venomous snakes will be fatal. In the sultry summer, nobody dare to sleep with his window open. After nightfall, the workers never venture out without carrying a stick or an axe, for sometimes they have to grapple with wild boars roaming in the mountains at night.
Moment of Rapture
But the Chinese oil prospectors are not enduring all these sufferings for nothing. No joy could be greater than the rapture they will experience when dark, crude oil finally spurts out from the well after months of frustrating drilling.
"I felt all my sufferings were compensated," one engineer recalled.
Workers at the Chu Tou Chi oil field were once seized by such a heartening event when they hit upon a rich oil trap in January, 1954. After five months of seemingly hopeless digging, they made it. From the No. 8 well, oil gushed out and spouted up tens of feet high. The whole CPC was enthralled. Excitement gripped the entire oil field. For over a month, the well kept overflowing, raising hopes that rich oil was finally discovered in Taiwan. In the initial period, oil produced by the No. 8 well alone equaled the total output of all the other wells combined. But to the dismay of CPC, this promising well proved short-lived. Slowly, oil output declined. Today it is producing only half a dozen barrels of oil a day.
However, the fast drying up No. 8 well also proved one thing: There definitely are oil deposits under the island. The big question is: Where?
Is it possible that oil wells so far are not drilled deep enough and therefore fail to reach the oil deposits? So, CPC is procuring new equipment from abroad for drilling deep wells up to 12,000 feet, almost thrice as deep as most existing wells.
At the same time, a new horizon is opened for oil exploration on Taiwan. Hitherto, oil wells are almost invariably drilled in the mountainous regions slightly down the lofty Central Range. But largely speaking, underground structure in plain areas is less molested by the tectonical movements which cause the earth crust to fold up and form into mountains. After much careful study, Chinese surveyors and their foreign advisors have decided to extend their exploratory work from the much combed mountains to the largely unsearched western coastal plains. Exploration in the mountains will still be going on. But most geologists agree that exploration in coastal plains will yield better results.
Geological surveys and the study of fossils are indispensable to oil exploration in mountainous areas - much the same as the art of physiognomy to character understanding. But on the plains, the geologist would be helpless since here he sees nothing on the paddy fields to indicate what is the structure below. No geologic outcrops can be found anywhere. So the explorers have to follow other means, either seismic surveys or gravity tests, to figure out the underground feature.
A New Horizon
Along Taiwan's west coast, seismic surveys have been going on for three years, bringing back valuable data. Several wells have also been drilled on the plain as a trial. From four wells drilled at Peikang near Chiayi, CPC explorers have picked up important geological data about the island's underground structure. Natural gas, which usually accompanies oil, was found miles down the earth surface near Peikang, in strata never reached before, indicating the existence of oil under Taiwan's western belt.
Parallel to exploration on the coastal plains, CPC is venturing into the Taiwan Straits to fathom oil deposits under the sea bottom. Offshore oil prospecting is a costly task, which will require millions of dollars of special instruments. CPC oil men have none of these instruments, but they can tap their ingenuity and resourcefulness. At ebb tide, when the sea retreats far beyond the normal water line, the explorers will dash out and test the sea bed structure on the water brim with seismic method. Stacks of complicated graphic reports are sent back daily to CPC for study.
Oil prospecting in Taiwan, however, is still a wild-cat search. Nobody is sure exactly where to find the oil deposits. With the little money available, the work is still confined to a small scale. All surveys and tests are carefully planned, accurately carried out, and the site of each well is chosen after minute study of all available data. But more often than not, there is no oil flowing out. The explanation is simple: The selected location might have been an ideal oil trap, but the oil has already slipped away to elsewhere long before the explorers come to it. As one Chinese petroleum geologist aptly puts it: "You may have finally found the cup, but the water in it has already dried up."
So the task of Chinese oil men is to find out not only a "cup", but a "cup" filled to the brim with oil. Undiscomfited by largely fruitless digging in more than a decade, the Chinese oil men are pushing the exploration with relentless vigor. They know there is oil, quite likely opulent oil, under the island.
According to one theory, CPC oil men point out, a cubic mile of sedimentary rocks in oil-producing land usually holds an average of 50,000 barrels of crude oil. Based on this assumption, the western coastal belt of Taiwan, measuring about 30 miles wide and 180 miles long with a reasonably explorable depth of two miles, may have a total oil deposit of some half a billion barrels.
Although this may be a very optimistic estimate, yet no one has doubted that the island has rich potential oil deposits of which the Chinese prospectors know of no bounds.