The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1943-11-30
Foreign Oil
BY PETER EDISON

1.-TWO uidInetrlcally opposed ideas on the part
government should play in postwar nterna-
tlonal big business are now coming down the
track toward a head-on collision.
On the one hand is TIE old-fashioned idea
that government should have 10 part in bust
ness. This view is supported to degree bv
the Department of justice antitrust division
theory that any kind of an international big
business deal leading towards a MONOPOLY is
wicked per Sc, a restraint of trade, against
the public interest, and therefore shouldn't
be allowed
On the other hand, there is the European
cartel idea that these deals are okay, par
tlcularly if the government benefits from them
or shares in them through government SUBJ
sldlary corporations. European pre-war rub.
Der and tin cartels are examples The U. S,
government has also shared in similar ven
lures through world wheat coffee, wool and
cotton Sterilization agreements. Also, wartime
monopolles are now exercised by the govern
ment-owned Rubber Reserve Company De-
tense Supplies Corporation Commodity Credit
Corporation and similar international procure
ment agencies. But theyre all temporary,
and they're mere chicken feed when COM
pared to the much larger postwar applica-
tons of this theory to the control of inter-
national aviation and international oil.
The International aviation thing has been
considerably in the linelght It hangs on
lHe ueCISlOI, apparently TO pe maze IN the
State Department, whether postwar interna-
tonal aviation expansion shall be an economic
free-for-all, with competing American compa-
MES scrambling for flying rights over various
routes, or whether one chosen instrument
company-either privately finances, publicly
financed a combination Of the two-shall
be given exclusive franchise under govern
ment control.
The international oil thing is just now COM
1s1t,x 70
recent disclosures on the Arn1y's Canol Oil
development project in Canada. The real cen
ter of this situation is in the still very hush
hush program of the Petroleum Reserves Cor
poration, another government corporation
which has apparently been given the job of
arranging for the development OF foreign oil
concessions, so that this oil can be made
available to the United States to make up
for diminishing American oil reserves, heavily
drawn on by the war.
The stage now seems to be set for PRO to
go places and do things The first place it
has gone is into Saudi Arabia, sending geo.
logicaldiplomatic mission to see what's cook
in on the desert oil stove. This comes as a
follow-up on the recent visit to the U. S. of
two Arabian princeS-concldenta, of course.
Now in the old days, it was always the GUS
tom for the big oil companies to send their
own missions to foreign countries to do bust
ness on oil rights. The big oil companies
didn't want U. S. government interference in
such business, and they yelled for govern
ment help only when some of the foreign gov
ernments got ramDunctious and seized the
American properties. Mexico did in 1885,
That confiscation appropriation or what
ever you want to call it may have changed
the picture for the oil companies future point
of view, in that it may have shown the ad-
visibility of having the government sit in as
partner on these foreign Oil deals. If the
foreign government then got funny and started
expropriating, it wouldn't De buc}ling just an
American corporation but the American gov
eminent A battleship could be dispatched
and the Marines landed under such circum-
stances, to restore order-ano property. Oh
there are lot of lovely wars in the making
in such Set-up.
AS a matter of fact, the oil concessions in
Saudi Arabia are already held on long-term
basis by an American company, the Callfor-
nia-Arabian Standrd Oil Company, a joint
subsidiary of the Texas company and Standard
of California Just what part the governments
Petroleum Reserves Corporation is to have
in this is not yet announced, but PRO is def
initely in international big business and is
taking the government along with it, willy
nilly. What comes of all this is something
to keep your eyes on. And is thls socialism,
or capitalism?