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It was at this stage, says Freeman, that the secretary ofthe company told the shareholders that the Standard Oil Company cabled a big advance on their last offer. MacPherson, whose personal attendance in America was imperative to complete the negotiations,' had only just time to rush down to the harbour and catch the American boat when the cable arrived. 'The trip to San Francisco from New Zealand took about four weeks. But long before the Mariposa arrived there, after calling at Samoa and Honolulu on the way, people began to talk. Some ugly rumour got about. There had been no further cables from Colonel Anderson or from the Standard Oil Trust. It took us some time to find out that MacPherson had never reached San Francisco ... on investigation it was found that the whole of the funds had been changed into American currency and that MacPherson had got away with the lot. He had probably left the boat quietly at Samoa and booked a passage to America of Europe on another boat and under another name .... 'I have set down, to the best of my recollection, the principal details of the most amazing and artistic swindle 1 have ever seen. At the cost of an initial outlay of a few hundred pounds, and a temporary bank draft of twenty thousand from their American accomplices, MacPherson and Anderson had got clean away with the best part of one hundred thousand pounds.' Freeman surmises it cost about 'a thousand or two' to bribe the man with the wagon who had also salted the soil. But the secret of MacPherson's 'extraordinary influence' never leaked out. 'Some of it, no doubt, was due to MacPherson's cultured and magnetic personality which temporarily deceived even such experienced men as the Premier and Mr Ward; although at the last moment they must have suspected something, when they held aloof ... quite a lot of people did not want to talk about this amazing swindle afterwards. For important businessmen never like to admit that they have been fooled ... .' Freeman was 81 when he wrote all this almost 40 years after the event. The fact that he was able to set down word-for-word conversations and transactions after all this time could well be regarded with some suspicion, as could the apparent absence of any official investigation into such a large-scale swindle. There is little doubt, however, that during this period, and later, there were irregularities by company promoters and sharepushers which bought oil exploration affairs in New Zealand into disrepute.
After the Samuel syndicate wound up its affairs in 1901 there was little activity in the Taranaki oilfield for several years. The fire had gone, but the spark was still there. It was fanned into brief flame in 1904 by G. E. Fair, who had been a member of the syndicate. With small backing from a group of Adelaide businessmen he founded the New Zealand Oilwells Company which bought the rights of the Samuel syndicate, but after spending about $5000 in equipment and drilling to 700 metres in a hole near the Hongi-Hongi Stream without success, its affairs were taken over by the Moturoa Petroleum Company, with J. B. Roy and Fair at the head. Drilling continued on the existing hole, renamed the Birthday well on Roy's birthday, and when the bit had reached about 800 metres it blew out' immense quantities of oil'. This led to great excitement in financial circles and within a few days shares which were quoted at $56 were selling at $120 in Auckland and $117 in Melbourne.
The Christchurch Truth reported: 'It really looks as if Taranaki has struck oil at last. It has got a well which is turning off oil at a barrel a minute and Taranaki, in a very excited condition, is sitting on the nozzle to keep it from breaking loose altogether ... shares that were not worth setting fire to have gone up like an unballasted balloon in a high wind, and a delirious province is setting up drinks for its friends. Taranaki will now proceed to give John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Concern an awful time. Taranaki deserves its luck and if only its ironsand gets floated its cup of joy will overflow worse than its solitary well. ... ' The Governor of New Zealand, Lord Plunket, visited New Plymouth and described the well as one of the most important features of the industry's future.
It was against this background that the Moturoa Petroleum Company Ltd announced that it has fulfilled the purpose for which it was formed, 'The discovery of payable oil free from water,' and that it was now time for a new concern to be established with the object of exploiting the 'wealth that lies under Moturoa'.
The second Taranaki Petroleum Company was formed at a meeting in Wellington late in June, 1906, at which G. E. Fair was appointed managing director. The directors decided that more holes should be sunk; and efforts were to be made to find a suitable market for the oil. The best available offer up to this time was a little over Ie a gallon of crude, from the New Zealand Government, offered more as an encouragement than on account of the Government's need for crude. It was decided the only way to sell the product was to refine it, and to this end one of the first acts of the board was to obtain quotations for a refining plant.
Several barrels of oil were sent to A. F. Craig and Co., of Paisley, Scotland, for analysis. 'This oil ... is the most superior we have examined,' came the reply. 'The refined products are of exceptional quality, colour and smell and there is a large proportion of wax of high melting point ... the crude petroleum contains only a very small proportion of unsaturated hydrocarbons and resembles in character and purity Pennsylvanian petroleum.' This analysis was very similar to the one made by the New Zealand Government analyst.

Armed with this report the Taranaki Petroleum Company approached the Government for a loan of$20,000 specifically to build a refinery. The request was shelved 'for consideration'.
Meanwhile the Birthday well was kept sealed, new holes were drilled nearby, and existing ones reopened, resulting in the production of enough crude to cause embarrassment. Large underground tanks were filled; there was little or no local market, no refinery, no means of exporting it where markets might have been found.
It was then that an experiment was made with a locomotive equipped to burn Taranaki crude oil in a trial run from New Plymouth to Wellington. A reporter who travelled with the train wrote: 'The trial seemed to be quite satisfactory apart from the smoke and the smell trailing over the landscape. It was noteworthy and comical to see how other railwaymen took the passage of the consumer of Taranaki oil. Some raised their hats ironically to us and with the other hand held their noses.' New Zealand Railways kept its counsel on the results of the trial.
During the period of the takeover of the Moturoa Petroleum Company in 1905 the seeds ofadispute which came to a head in 1907 and 1908 were sown. This involved allegations of 'salting' the wells with previously recovered oil, with the object of influencing the share market at a critical time. Some very heated meetings of shareholders were held, at which it was charged that at least two directors had sold their shares while the price was at its highest. The allegations were denied as fiercely as they were made, and votes of no confidence were defeated after lengthy and loud debates. The 1908 annual meeting was informed that employees had been threatened with instant dismissal if they mentioned petroleum matters outside the works. It was discovered that the Birthday well, renamed Taranaki No.1, upon which hopes of the new company were founded and which had been capped when it was found to contain 'immense quantities of oil', was a non-producer, and it was this fact which raised shareholders' suspicions and ire.
To stimulate both drilling and production the Government on June 1, 1909, offered a bonus of' £2500 to the first company which produced 250,000 gallons of oil, and another £2500 for the first 500,000 gallons of refined oil' .The Taranaki Petroleum Company won both bonusesthe first immediately; the second four years later when the country's first refinery came on stream.
The erection of 420 tons of equipment valued at $45,000 gave employment to between 80 and 100 men. A special measure was passed by the Government, enabling the land to be sold to the company. It occupied an area of about 4ha, and an avenue of trees was planted on the driveway, which can still be seen on the south side of Breakwater Road opposite the cool store, now leading nowhere.
Total cost of the refinery was $79,000 and it was completed in 18 months. On June 17, 1913, at a gala ceremony attended by the board of directors, local body leaders and leading New Zealand businessmen, oil was directed into the refinery for the first time. J. D. Henry, technical adviser, explained that it would be at least three weeks before oil was fully refined. 'We must go through all the refining stages from A to Z because, for one reason, our most valuable product is the last one (paraffin wax). All other products must be drawn off before we get to the wax, and as it is wax which gives our crude unequalled commercial value amongst the oils of the world, it would be financially unsound-indeed, I may say mad-to sell it as oil or in a residual or fuel oil state.'The fires were lit under the three stills on June 1, and the oil was turned into the stills 16 days later by Captain Halsey, of HMS New Zealand. When the refinery opened there was stored in underground tanks nearby more than half a million barrels of crude oil, which was being added to all the time. By 1913 the company's No.3 well earned a 'record for the world' in that it had been running continuously for three years without a pump; and No.5 was continuously erupting while the refinery was being built.
One of the first users of the New Plymouth refined benzine was Mr Okey, the Member of Parliament for New Plymouth, who with Mr Wilkinson, the Member for Egmont, made the trip from New Plymouth to Wellington in a motor car using the new fuel. 'The journey was covered without the slightest mishap,' reported the Dominion. Oil rigs were 'sprouting like mushrooms' in many parts of Taranaki during this period. Thirteen other companies had been formed between the time of the refinery'S purchase and the time it came into production. Lord Ranfurly, chairman of Taranaki (NZ) Oil Wells Ltd formed in London to finance the refinery, said that 'as this was the only refinery in the Southern Hemisphere, all oil from these wells would be bought and distilled by the Taranaki Company'. Calculations showed that even 'by paying so much as fourpence a gallon' the company would make an annual profit of $48,000, sufficient to pay 5% dividend on the capital. I 6 For a time this sort of claim seemed justified. During the latter part of 1913 production kept the refinery working almost to capacity. The half million gallons in the storage tanks was soon refined, as the continuing production from the wells. But the refinery was costing a lot of money to run, and it was soon evident that more capital would be needed if the venture was to succeed.
One of the many reasons for the failure of so many oil-seeking ventures, including the refinery, was financial. In about 1913 the cost of sinking a well to 400 metres was about $1000. It was not therefore, the actual drilling operations which ruined the companies, but the colossal vendor and promotion profits, management fees, and the sometimes mysterious losses of capital. For instance, Taranaki Oil Wells Ltd had been formed in London by H. J. Brown, chairman of the British Empire Trust, with a capital of $800,000-enough to sink 800 wells. Its purpose was to develop the Moturoa oilfield and to erect the refinery. Chairman was Lord Ranfurly and other directors in London included Sir George Clifford. (New Zealand representative), the New Zealand board comprised C. Carter (chairman); H. Okey, MP, J. R. Roy, J. J. Elwin and C. E. Bellringer.