OIL OF IRAQ.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 47, 5 December 1938, Page 8

OIL OF IRAQ.

WORLD’S GREATEST PIPE-LINE. In the past, across the Syrian Desert, marched the armies of conquest, pillage and slaughter. But in our time, only a few years ago, came another conquering army the conquering army of science and invention—the army of the Empire of Oil, said Robert H. Neil in an overseas exchange.

Perhaps the most significant event in the Near East for a decade was the completion and formal opening in January, 1935, of the world’s greatest pipe-line, from the Mosul oilfields in Northern Iraq across 600 ingles of desert and mountain „ to the Mediterranean. Many years of planning and negotiation, 30 months of actual construction and nearly £12,500,000 were required for the project, and it is beyond doubt the most international in character of all great engineering feats. The pipe-line crosses four countries —■ Iraq, Trans jor dania, Syria, and Palestine, while the Iraq Petroleum Company, which holds the Mosul concessions and built the pipe-line, includes British, Frerfbh, Dutch and American interests. The two ports at which the pipeline debouches are Tripoli, in Syria, and Haifa, in Palestine. Thousands of desert Arabs were steadily and profitably employed during the construction of the pipe-line, and to-day many are permanently attached to the pumping stations as labourers. The ceremonies attending the formal opening of the pipe-line began at Kirkuk, on January 14, 1935, when King Ghazi, of Iraq, son of the late King Feisul, opened a valve and sent the crude oil on its way. There were present also many British and French notables.

On the map the pipe-line resembles a wishbone, with the bifurcation at Haditha. The total length of pipe laid is 1176 miles. Pumping stations are located over the system at intervals of from fifty to one hundred miles. Suitable quarters and an adequate water supply have been provided for the permanent staff at each of the eleven pumping stations. In addition to air patrols, which watch for leaks and desert marauders, the stations arc in constant communication by telegraph or wireless with the Iraq police, the French military authorities at Palmyra, the Transjordan desert patrols, and the Royal Air Force at Amman and Haifa.

The pipe-line itself consists of over 150,000 pipes electrically welded together, and buried a yard deep, after having been wrapped in a winding sheet of asbestos felt. It crosses two rivers east of the Syrian Desert—the Tigris and the Euphrates —and two west of it—the Orontes and the Jordan; it runs through the fertile valleys of Palestine, over the rugged, inhospitable mountains of Transjordania, and down the verdant slopes of the mountains of the Lebanon; it passes by the wild, primitive Kurdish villages -in Iraq; the cultivators of the Orontes Valley; the modern Jewish settlers in the plains of Esdraelon and Acre, as well as by the Bedouin tentdwellers and the nomad graziers of the desert.

In its gradient journey westward to the Mediterranean, the oil lino ascends to a height of two thousand five hundred' feet above sea level, and descends into the Valley of the Jordan, to a depth of 885 feet below the level of the sea. Here is situated the lowest pumping station in the world.