Well Chosen Words

The oil industry's almost-unanimous opposition to Ickes' plans for an Arabian pipeline (TIME, Dec. 27, et seq.) reached a new high last week. In Dallas, Sun Oil's Vice President James Edgar Pew of Philadelphia flatly called the pipeline an invitation to the next world war.

At this point a man named De Golyer spoke up.

Everette Lee De Golyer, 57, of Dallas, is perhaps the world's greatest oil geologist. Born in a Kansas homesteader's sod hut, he became the founder of a U.S. crude oil producer (Amerada Corp.), a director of Dallas' plush First National Bank, and the man whom the industry reverently calls "the father of geophysical exploration in the U.S." This man was the man whom Harold Ickes recently sent to survey U.S. oil properties in the Middle East, and who now attempted to explain to Americans why the U.S. is dabbling in Middle East oil.

Is It Necessary? "I hold no brief," said De Golyer frankly, "for the Government's Arabian pipeline [but] until some satisfactory substitute is found ... I am for the line. The oilfields of the Middle East are practically certain to be of paramount importance as a source of the world's oil supplies for a generation to come. . . . The fact that the Iraq Petroleum Co.* is even now asking for steel with which to build a line of substantially the same size ... is sufficient answer as to whether additional petroleum is needed in the Eastern Mediterranean.

"Facilities to increase pipeline delivery can be built at present only with steel from the United States. [Should] such facilities ... be provided to the international group . . . and thus maintain their existing monopoly of pipeline deliveries to the Eastern Mediterranean and through it to Europe? ... In my opinion, an increase in Iraq production will only serve to warp further the present unequal position. . . . The problem of oil in the Middle East is one of seeing that the oil produced in each political unit gets its fair share of the total market. . . ."

Who Is Fascist? "The cry of 'Fascist' so commonly raised in objecting to the Government's participation in the Arabian scene is used chiefly to cover a lack of clear thinking which the proposal merits. No one has been foolish enough to charge the British Government with being 'Fascist' because of its 30-year partnership in Iranian oil.

"I do not share the oil industry's fear that the construction of the-Arabian pipeline is but the first step toward taking over the industry. No one cried 'entering wedge' when the Government built the Big Inch or Little Inch lines . . . nor when the Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the 100-octane program. . . ."

Who Wants War? "It seems fair to assume that the Government is under no greater obligation to go to war to protect its own investment in what is essentially a commercial enterprise than it is to protect the investments of its nationals in similar enterprises. To leave the American companies in a weak position is to invite disaster to the American position in oil.

"It is difficult for our people to realize the degree to which the chancelleries of great European nations are willing to interfere politically in support of the business interests of their nationals, or the degree of economic vassalage accepted by the smaller states of the Persian Gulf in the treaties by which they are allied to Britain. Able as American business may be, it cannot support itself against such unequal competition."

Whose Business Is It? "Building the Arabian line is to the advantage of one group and they are for it. It threatens the markets of another group and they are against it. Actually the problem is not one to be settled by the oil industry.

"I submit," concluded De Golyer, "that whether or not objections to the present enterprise, its initiation, or method of handling are valid, it was conceived, as one editor put it, 'in the interest of national security and for no other purpose.' "

*Iraq Petroleum is jointly owned by the British (who have the biggest interest), the U.S. (Standard Oil of N.J. and Socony-Vacuum), the French and the Dutch.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.