U.S. Oil Refinery Seized By Castro

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29245, 1 July 1960, Page 11

U.S. Oil Refinery Seized By Castro

HAVANA, June 29. Cuba’s Prime Minister (Dr. Fidel Castro) seized one of the two American-owned oil refineries in Cuba today after bitterly telling a mass meeting he was ready to take over the property of all Americans in Cuba “down to the nails in their shoes.”

The. seizure order against the Texaco Oil Company’s 26,000,000dollar plant in Santiago followed the refusal of three companies—two American and one DutchBritish—to process Russian crude oil bought from the Soviet Union with Cuban sugar, American Associated Press reported. Dr. Castro ordered his -National Institute of Petroleum to intervene—a practice equal to confiscation—at the Texaco plant unless its operators accepted 25.000 barrels of Russian crude oil and processed it. Company officials naa orders to refuse the Russian oil. Intervention, backed by armed workers already in. virtual control of the Santiago refinery, resulted. Agents of Castro’s Cuban Petroleum Institute took over the

Havana headquarters of Texaco an hour later It was reported. Observers believed it would be only a matter of days before the Government took over the Ameri-can-owned Esso and the British-Dutch-owned Shell refineries in Havana. They, too, have refused to refine Russian crude oil.