Evening star., 1944-04-23

cents barrel, for the avowed purpose Of
encouraging exploration and stimulating
production from stripper wells. But it
Is also true that the administration, ad-
vised by Ickes has religiously abstained
from laying so much as q finger on
petroleum production.
Soft pedaled finally was the truth that
the Socialist" step of Government own
ership in the oil business was taken 80
years ago by Tory administration in
Great Britain. At the instance of Win
ston Churchill, then First Lord Of the
Admiralty, the British government In
1914 purchased majority stock interest
in the Anglo-Persian Oil Co., now
Anglo-Iranian Oil. The argument with
which Churchill carried the day was
that the possession of secure petroleum
reserves for the fleet, which has con-
verted from coal to Oil, was matter Of
life and death to the empire.
Later the government-domin
Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. acquired 2375
per cent stock interest in the Iraq Pc
troieum Co., which controls the fields of
Iraq and Qatar, and also SO per cent
interest In the Kuwait concession on
the Persian Gulf, the other half of
which is controlled by an American
company, the Gulf Oil Corp. Anglo
Iranian is owned 56 per cent by the
British government, q per cent by Royal
Dutch Shell and II per cent by other
British interests.
British Get u. S. Material
The ownership Of 1raq Petroleum is
divided as follows: Anglo-Iranian, Royal
Dutch Shell, q French group and the
Near East Development Co., 23.75 per
cent each, and fabulous Armenian
named Gulbenkian, per cent His
fraction is now held by the British
custodian of alien property. The Near
East Development Co. is owned $3.50
by two American corporations, Standard
of New Jersey and socony-vacuum.
On top of this, the British govern
ment has obtained and exercised priori-
ties for the purchase OF upward OF
$40,000,0 900 Of American equipment with
which to expand British oil production
in the Middle East. Also, thus far in
vain, it Is pressing for lease-lend money
and priorities on American steel with
which to build supplementary large
bore pipeline from the Persian Gulf to
the Mediterranean. This project would
treble the delivery of British oil now
flowing through an Iraq Petroleum pipe
line with terminals at Haifa in Palestine
and Tripoli in Lebanon. Incidentally, it
would parallel and probably make super
fuons the proposed pipeline Of PRO.
The Middle East is regarded rs the
worlds richest petroleum field, with
proved and indicated reserves estimated
as high as 10000, ,00o. 600 barrels, Daily
production Is currently as follows: Iran,
325.000 barrels; Iraq, 10000, and Saudi
Arabia and Bahrein, 5000. The Kuwait
field is temporarily shut in. Control in
the area as whole Is eo4 par cent Brit
ish and 32.7 per cent American. The
only exclusive United states controls are
on Bahrein Island, in saudi-Arabia,
and Gulf Oil's holdings In Kuwait, which
are separate from the British part of
the concession. The PRO pipeline was
intended to service these three areas.
Concessions in Bahrein and Saudi
Arabia are held by Standard Oil of Cali
fornia and the Texas Co. through two
jointly-owned subsidiaries, the Arabian
American OIL Co. and the Bahrein Pc
troleum Co.
Saudi-Arabia, in which Arabian
American controls concessions and
options near the east coast Of the
peninsula with an area of 600, 900 square
miles, is regarded by oilmen as the most
phenomenal reserve in history One dis
trict, with an area equal to that of
Texas, is thought to contain more oil
than the entire original deposits in the
continental United States. Future gush-
ers are calculated in terms of millions
of barrels daily instead Of the hundreds
of thousands familiar in this country.
A glance at the map shows that Saudi
Arabia is hemmed in from the seacoast
Continued on Page C-3. Column 81