PETROL AND OIL

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 122, 22 May 1920, Page 7

PETROL AND OIL

SUPPLIES FOR AUSTRALIA.

. MELBOURNE. May 21. Tbe Senate passed the Oil Agreement Bill.—(A. and N.Z. Cable.)

The bill ratifies the arrangement'made between the Commonwealth and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, under which the company will take steps to ensure adequate supplies of crude -oil and a refinery to deal with them. Mr. Hughes recently stated that the Government was to take up in this refinery, the capital of which was £500,000, £1 more than half in order to give them exactly the same control over it as the British Government bad over the AngloPersian Company. They would be entitled to half the , profits, and they would be sure, of ample supplies of fuel oil for the navy, and would give employUMnt to large numbers of men in the immediate future. For an expenditure of £250,000 the Commonwealth Government was to become a partner in this great' company, and be wanted to point out that they were buying the knowledge and skill of the company. It was not proposed that the Government should interfere in the management in any way, but it would have the right to •prevent the company selling its refined oil produced in* this country to any foreign company without the Government's consent. TI a Government would also have the right to ensure that there was enough oil for the navy, and could veto any proposal and prevent the status of the company being changed. If there was more capital' to be called up, it could only be done with the Government's consent, and the Government was always to have a majority of the shares. The schedule provided, inter alia, that the Government could resume the works at any time after fifteen years.