THE ROMANCE OF OIL.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3334, 16 August 1926, Page 2

THE ROMANCE OF OIL.

(By Martin Donohoe.)

(fold-seeJviug and ou-seeiiiiig have always yieioea aounuam material for 110ve.ist s pioo and Kinema story. Ana wane a- romance is tnac wuicn is assusocnaed witn tne early history of the Angio-Jdersian oil Company; It is* a wouaerxnl cnapter m our island story, it was urougno Home to me very vividly wiien travelling up tne Karim rivet, on tne nrst surge 01 my journey to t lie uimolds m the wild Persian lull country, wnero turoulent triuesmcii still

actively manliest their primitive fondness lor war and plunder, and where, neiore the advent of Riza Khan—-the new Persian ruler ol tiie iron will ana the heavy list —the writ of the Shan was as a scrap of paper. ! thought of william Knox D’Arcy, the intrepid. New Zealander, who, having made a fortune in mining in Australia, set out to discover oil in Persia—and lost that fortune before success crowned his efforts.

D’Arcy and his companions travelled on muje or camel through this then little Known country, battling with adverse fortune and unfriendly natives. Trly they wore endowed with the British pioneering spirit that triumphs overdifficulties and rarely admits defeat and failure. , Then, too, there is the story ot Reynolds, the first of the field engineers, which is an epic in itself. i Tie was full of grit and courage. Nothing daunted him. Like Nelson on a famous occasion, Reynolds turned a blind eye, in a metaphorical sense, to an order to cease action. He had a telegram in his pocket ordering him to stop further boring operations and to transfer himself and Ids outfit to Borneo. Ho must have possessed something of the gambler’s instinct. “I don’t like stopping at an odd number of feet,” he said; “lot’s go down a bit more and make it an even number.” He did, and an hour later the. percussion drill was blown out by the gas pressure from below; the long-sought-for oil was struck at last. Thus was laid the foundation of the company’s fortune. But it was a. narrow margin between failure and success. What a monument t.n British pluck and enterprise! The organisation that now supplies

the British Navy, many foreign countries, and a great part of the British Empire with oil, has been brought to its present state of perfection by British capital controlled by British brains. Hore, in the heart of Persia, is a little ’oil of Britain, a State within a State,

witli its own administration, its own police, its own railway and fleet ol steamers, and its own hospitals. The Anglo-Persian Company has added immensely to the prosperity of Persia. One obtains a glimpse of its ramidca Lions and sees something of its ritory” during the ascent of the Kanin river' to Ahwaz, and afterwards in the curse of the narrow-gauge railway journey to the oil area. Across the iafc country bordering the river bank runs the eight-inch black pipe line that brings the oil from the fields to Abadan. En route, the crude oil is handled by several pumping stations, which give it the necessary impetus folds journey to the refineries. Leaving the stern-wheeler river steamer at Ahwaz (as the Kanin was m spate and difficult for navigation) f wont by automobile to Maindan-i-Naf-tun, the centre of the oil region. From Dar-i-khazinah, beyond Ahwaz. a light railway runs up the Tembi valley to the oil wells. There had been abundant rain, and the young crops wore sprouting. Wild flowers of every hue grew in profusion, a wonderful contrast in color to the vivid green of the ripening wheat. There was only one disappointment

for me —an agreeable one. In oil producing areas in America, and those 1 have visited in Rumania and Russia.

the ground itself is usually sodden with oil. Rut at Maidan-i-iNaftuii, whence •nmes so large a proportion of the world’s supply, I saw no oil at all; it is “bottled up,” and there is no waste. inspecting any of the producing wells, all one sees is the stumpy end of a black pipe, capped by a valve like that of a water main, protruding from a cement bed.

A second pipe leads away to a> tankfarm, where the gas is separated from the crude oil. This gas is burnt off in the open, and at night its glare lights up the hills for miles.

The oil from the tank farm is directed through a second pipe line to the nearest pumping station, whence it is pushed off on its long journey down country to the Abadan refineries. One of the most famous wells on the

Telds is “F7,” and for years it Inn held the oil-producing record, its tota yield being something like G.j millioi tons.

A sentimental interest attaches to “F7.” It has done its work well, and is now being allowed to enjoy a wellearned rest. I was present the dav it was being closed down for purely technical reasons.

There are other and younger wells which tap the same oil seam or source: the producing, area has been extended many miles north-west and south-east, so that the volume of production is not_ likely to suffer hv the putting of “E7” temporarily out of action. One of the most difficult pieces ol work which the company's engineers had to do was the putting down of the heavy pipe line over two ranges of hills, the I man Riza and Tul Khayat, lying between Maidan-i-Naftun and Ahwaz. At their highest point these hills reach an elevation of 1300 feet above the refinery built by the company at Abadan. Twenty miles of this bill’ section bad to bo laid where no roads existed, the pipe being carried by double mule team over tracks cut and blasted out of the hillside. Four nudes were needed to carry a single length of pipe 20 feet long and weighing 8201 hj. the pipe being slung from wooden bars oiuiug the saddles of each pair of mules, Home idea of what it has cost to develop the Persian oil industry may. be gained from the fact that British investors have provided close upon £20,000.000 of capital for the A nglo-l’crsiau Oil Company. "When I)’Airy’s geologists and engineers first visited the area of Maidau-i-Nall.mi. they found the district almost "I off from the world by rough mouii■ains and deep gorges, with no roads, Mid only mule tracks linking it witli Shuster, anrl thence with Ispahan Teheran, and lli<- other chief centres of ”crsia. 'Hie Maidan ifseO was a har- '■( !!. devoiate region, almost unbearable 'iot in summer, and during the rainy season the surrounding country was a amass of stickv mud.

The first explorers had to drag in their heavy boilers and drilling mate"ini as best they could by mule team ’ml wagon over the tracks which toollie place of roads. To transport the thousands of tons ’!’ heavy material for tbo new wells ’owciTiil pumping stations, storage 'auks, pipeline, and the buildings for the oil-field staff, roads were absolute!’ necessary, so the first work of the coin >anv’s engineers was the making of •oad between Der-i-.Fha'dneh (the high st navigable point for steamers on he Tppcr Karun River! and Mai ’ oi-i-Xafitiin.

The first road followed the Temb : River for part of its length, crossing and recrossing the river at various

points by ford. During the rain season it could not be used owing to floods, so a. second road was hewn out of the mountain side. Over this road at the 'present time motor-lorries pass day and night, carrying most of the. material needed for the fields.

As the great work has grown, even this second road has not proved sufficient for the traffic, so the company has built a light railway, the first of any length in Persia, which wdl connect the oilfields with the Karun River and thus with the sea. In regions where formerly (.here were only a few scattered peasants earning a precarious living, today arc found towns gven over almost entirely to the oil industry. The Anglo-Persian Company financed the scheme for the deepening of the bar at Pea, which, because of its shifting silt and its shallow depth, was a great hindrance to navigation. Vessels of heavy draught could not he fully loaded or unloaded on the inside of the bar. In the case of general cargo, barges had to be employed both for inward and outward transhipments; for oil it required the services of two tankers to furnish a full cargo for one. All this is now changed. The new channel constructed by the port authorities under the supervision of Captain Ward, the chief port officer, was recently opened by King Feisal at Iraq, and Vessels of deep draught can now negotiate the bar without transhipping their cargoes. ft would he well if the advocates of the Iraq “pro-scuttle” policy reflected a little and endeavored to realise the national importance of the Persian oil interests to Great Britain. Were we to scuttle out of the country, to-morrow the Persian oil industry—with its millions of Government money and private capital —wouhl fall as a rich prize to the first foreign Power enterprising and courageous enough to grab it. Were a foreign Power to hold Mosul we could not hold Bagdad (neither could the Iraq Government) ; we should be starved' out by the man in possession of ■'he Mosul wheat area; and, once we relinquished Bagdad, our hold on the port of Basra and the head of the Persian Gulf (whence the oil from the Persian fields is shipped), would become precarious indeed.