OIL New Giant

Among the nation's 2,584,000 unemployed last month, perhaps the most distinguished was grey-haired Ralph K. Davies of Woodside, Calif. He had joined the Standard Oil Co. of California as a 16-year-old junior clerk, rose to $57,000 (a year) as senior vice president, and was in line for its presidency when, in 1941, he left to run the wartime oil industry for Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. His war job done, Davies found himself relegated to a minor vice presidency at Standard. He resigned rather than let Ickes--who had bought ten shares of Standard of California stock for that purpose--fight for his reinstatement.

Last week, Ralph Davies had a big, new job, which would find him competing with Standard of California for the oil riches of the Middle East. The nation's independent oilmen had long fretted & fumed at the big-company domination of Middle East oil. Under the guidance of Davies and Frank Phillips, board chairman of Phillips Petroleum Co., nine independents gathered at Bartlesville, Okla. to make a big company of their own--the $100 million American-Independent Oil Co. As president, they chose Ralph Davies.

Squeaking Wheel. The syndicate had been formed with State Department blessing. Ever since early this year, when the Standard Oil Co. (N.J.) and Socony-Vacuum announced they would cut in on the Saudi Arabian oil melon long monopolized by Standard of California and the Texas Co. (TIME, March 24), the independents had screamed for their share. They protested that foreign oil imports were cutting into their domestic markets.

Davies' new company can now almost surely count on State Department support to win concessions in two potentially oil-rich, but undeveloped Middle East territories: 1) Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea; and 2) the Persian Gulf "neutral zone" jointly owned by King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and Sheikh Ahmad ibn as Sabbah of Kuwait. Sheikh Sabbah last week was already dickering with bidders for the neutral-zone concession.

It was no accident that, even as Davies, Phillips and friends signed their final papers, Yemen's Prince Saif al-Islam Abdullah stepped from a big Phillips Petroleum Co. plane at Bartlesville. He looked just like an oilman in sheikh's clothing. For eight days he had been sumptuously dined (but not wined, since Moslem custom forbids it) by Phillips' vice president in charge of public relations. He had been flown on a quick tour of Oklahoma, Texas and California oil fields and refineries. At Oklahoma City, a sheep was roasted for the Prince; at Borger, Tex. he got eggplant, cheese and bread prepared in Yemenite fashion by Mrs. Sam Mafey, the Yemen-born wife of a Phillips employee.

Grassy Meal. At week's end, Prince Abdullah said he had not yet signed any concessions. The oil industry's best guess was that Prince Abdullah had promised one, but first had to go home to get it sanctioned by his xenophobic father, crusty, many-wived Imam Yahya bin Mohamed bin Hamid el Din, 77, called "the world's most independent monarch."

Imam Yahya had once said: "I and my people would rather eat grass than allow foreigners to enter the country." But this year, when the U.S. offered him a $1,000,000 credit, the Imam let son Abdullah venture overseas to discuss still further inroads by the hated foreigner. If he had to eat either grass or his words, Imam Yahya, who thinks European powers are too close for comfort, apparently preferred to do it with someone from very far away.

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