New oil agency created

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 17

New oil agency created

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright)

PARIS, November 17.

Sixteen of the world’s leading nonCommunist industrialised countries have formally created an oil sharing agency to deal with any future crises.

France refused to join the new group but French presidential sources said that they did not regard the latest stand on energy by the United States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) as a rejection of French policy. In a speech in Chicago Dr Kissinger urged the industrialised nations of Western Europe, North America and Japan to band together in a big programme of energy conservation and financial protection. France is to push ahead with its own plans for an international conference bringing together both oilconsumer y and producer

countries, as well as countries of the developing world. The new group was established within the 24-country Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The 16 countries that elected to join the agency were the United States, Britain, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. France's decision to boycott the agency was in line with its policy of not joining any group that might seem provocative to the oilproducer countries.