REPORT ON OIL PRICES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27591, 23 February 1955, Page 14

REPORT ON OIL PRICES

Suppression Alleged In Geneva (Special Correspondent N.ZJP.A.) LONDON, February 21. “Powerful interests are trying to hush up a United Nations report which accuses the big international oil combines of keeping petrol prices too high in Britain and other European countries—and they have partly succeeded,” reports the Geneva correspondent of the “Sunday Express.” He says that all printers’ proofs have been destroyed or put in safes and printers have been warned not to allow unauthorised persons to see them. “And these precautions are being taken about a document which was originally intended to be merely a chapter in the quarterly bulletin of the Economic Commission for Europe. At the last moment the article was withdrawn from the report. “It accuses the major oil producers, especially those in the United States, of holding up oil prices by cartel agreement. “It says that oil prices could be appreciably reduced in Tnany Western European countries and continues: ‘The price paid by Western Europe for Middle East oil is tied to that of United States oil. The wide divorce which persists between prices and production costs in the Middle East suggests that if these links were severed prices charged on sales to European markets could be significantly lowered.’ “Economic Commision experts assert that because of cartel price-fixing the consumer is the underdog who has to accept what the oil magnates force upon him. They can find no reason why the price of Middle East oil should continue to be tied to that of the United States.”