See also - Information on the new proposal for Beverley. Oilmin NL - Transoil NL - Petromin NL
Oilmin, Petromin, and Transoil were three associated companies, closely identified with the mining interests of Queensland ex-Premier Bjelke Petersen (1). They tended to work together, while preserving a certain fiction that they were separately identified.
Together with Magellan Petroleum (50%), Oilmin was part of a consortium (21 %) seeking oil and gas rights over Aboriginal land west of Alice Springs at Mereenie (2). In its 1980 annual report the company announced that the partners had agreed a 1.5% royalty to the Aborigines (as opposed to 10% to the NT government) (3).
The agreement was hailed by the Central Land Council (CLC) as "... a significant demonstration that the Aboriginal Land Rights Act is working" and the first of its kind. The CLC envisages a partnership agreement with the companies and expressed its gratitude to them for their readiness to pay a US$32,000 tax to the NT government on its behalf (4).
As well as being one of the partners at Beverley in South Australia, Oilmin has also prospected for uranium in the Cape York province of north Queensland - almost completely an Aboriginal-claimed area - where it reported "good prospects" at Iron Range (5) and where drilling started (6) on the Lockhard Aboriginal Reserve in the early '80s (1).
In early 1981, Oilmin chairman Bill Siller made no secret of his conviction that nuclear power was essential. The next century, he told an Australian Institute of Energy seminar, would be "the age of electricity" and nuclear power would have to be the basis of electricity generation if the western world "... did not want to be outstripped by communist countries" (7).
Oilmin has also prospected at Mount Painter, 110 km north-west of Leigh Creek in the Lake Frome uranium area of South Australia, along with Transoil. More than 7000 tonnes of U3O8 in a number of small deposits have been located (8).
In 1983, Oilmin and its new Mereenie partner Pancontinental announced that first oil from the field would flow late that year.
It was partnered with Oilmin and Petromin on the Mereenie oil field where it holds a 9% interest. It is also involved in uranium exploration at Cape York and at Beverley (1).
Like Oilmin and Petromin, Transoil was partly controlled by the interests of Bjelke Petersen, the well-known racist ex-Premier of Queensland.
It was also prospecting with Oilmin at Mt Painter, 110km north-west of Leigh Creek in the Lake Frome area of South Australia (3).
It was partnered by Oilmin and Transoil at Mereenie oil field (see Oilmin) where it held a 7.5% interest, in uranium exploration at Cape York, and at Beverley (qv) (1).
Like its stable mates Oilmin and Transoil, Petromin was reined in by Queensland red-neck and ex-premier, Joh Bjelke Petersen (2).
SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.
Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.
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Page last updated January 31, 1998.
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