UNPRODUCTIVE WELLS. 193 



site a marketable commodity. In former times there was no such 

 competition for securing the best places as now exists ; when a 

 man desired to dig a well there was ample room for it, and he had 

 not to secure a place for a well years before he was in a position 

 to begin to dig it. Now a well site is worth about R50 and 

 readily sold for this price to any applicant by the twinzayos. But 

 as not every buyer is in the position to pay at once the expense of 

 constructing several wells, he secures perhaps a dozen well sites, 

 while he actually constructs only one well. Of course the number of 

 well sites within the reserves is limited, as it depends on the area 

 of the reserves; it was found convenient to allot two square chains to 

 every well site, and the area of both the Twingon and Berne reserves 

 contains 450 acres, hence the theoretically possible number of wells 

 amounts to 2,250 ; of these 1,190 are already in existence, thus 

 allowing space for 1,060 more well sites ; in other words, more than half 

 the allotted area has been disposed of. Owing to the physical con- 

 stitution of the ground it will, however, be extremely difficult, if not 

 impossible, to divide the remaining area in such a way that 1,060 

 additional wells could be conveniently located, in fact it is more 

 probable that the actual number will be far below that figure ; 

 however, if the remaining land were to be sold at the present rate 

 of, say, 200 well sites a year, it would be disposed of in less than five 

 years. 



We may now sum up our review of the changes "the pit wells 

 have undergone during the last seven years in a few words. 



There has been a great increase in the number of productive 

 wells, their depth, and their production since 1888. Although this 

 seems to indicate a very prosperous state of the native oil fields such 

 view is a deceptive one, because the increase of production has solely 

 been the result of the construction of a number of fresh wells 

 in a hitherto hardly exploited part of the reserves, while, on the 

 other hand, those wells situated in the older parts of the field, which 

 formerly chiefly supplied the production, show a distinct decline in 

 yield notwithstanding their increased depth. 



O ( 239 ) 



