Pipeline into Pipedream

Harold Ickes' Arabian pipeline, which unofficially died as a Government-sponsored project two months ago (TIME, April 17), last week got a semi-official headstone. Honest Harold still insisted that the pipeline would be built. But from his Petroleum Reserves Corp. came the admission that nothing is being done about the line, pending "developments."

The most probable "developments": the pipeline may be resurrected as a project of U.S. oil companies with concessions in oil-rich Arabia. The U.S. would lend them an estimated $130-165 million to build the line from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, probably to Haifa in Palestine.

Ickes' Petroleum Reserves Corp., which had worldwide plans until the pipeline set Congressional hatchetmen to work, likewise appeared to be going nowhere. PRC had lost its key personnel in the exodus of businessmen from Washington (see Transition). By last week it appeared that PRC might crawl under the headstone with the pipeline.

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