NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS '

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 93, 21 April 1942, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS '

INDIES OILFIELDS

"SCORCHED EARTH" POLICY

Aggressive action by the AngloIndian ahd Chinese troops in the Irrawaddy Valley is reported today as having recovered—temporarily at least—Yenangyaung, the centre of the Burma oilfields, destruction of the installations of which had already been partially carried out. The operation is probably designed to delay the advance j of the Japanese and permit an ex- j tension of the "scorched earth" ; policy by the Allies to the rest of j the oilfields, should that be necessary. The Burma oilfields, which produce on an average a million tons of oil a! year, for the supply mainly of India I and China, are the last of the great East Indian fields to remain in Allied hands. The field lies in the basin of j the Irrawaddy on a line down tho j centre, and from north to south are] the fields of Indaw, Yenangyat, Singu, I Yenangyaung, ■ Minbu, and several smaller fields. The most important fields are Yenangyaung and Singu.- The invaders have already reached the southernmost field—after the main installations had been destroyed. At Palembang. ! What the destruction of an oilfield means and how it is carried ou* is de- ! scribed by an eye-witness in Palemjbang, one of the world's greatest oil centres, at the time—early in February J —when the Japanese had landed para- ; troops in the area and were coming iup the Musi River in force. The ac- | count is given, in an issue of the "Christian Science Monitor" just to hand, by L. W. Elliott, an official of the Standard Oil Company, who had escaped to Batavia. At the refinery were some 70 Americans, 400 Europeans, and 3300 native employees, all since accounted for. The paratroops were wiped out before they could establish themselves, but there was a Japanese invasion force coming up the Musi River in transports. In the early hours of Sunday morning the Dutch army experts went to work, and in a short time had destroyed all the vital instruments, machinery, ' and loose equipment. Time was then al-j lowed for the troops to withdraw to safety. Then fire bombs released simultaneously by an electrical system set the entire refinery stock ablaze with a deafening roar. Millions of barrels of petroleum products billowed in smoke and flames into the sky. Then j followed the destruction of 81 miles of buried pipeline .and the oilwells themselves. Dynamite charges were detonated every few hundred feet, . and even where the pipeline passed under the centres of three large rivers. The fires were the greatest in history—fires which even influenced the weather and caused exceptionally heavy thunderstorms. Complete Destruction. j The destruction was complete. The whole town of Palembang went up in flames, including commercial buildings and rubber warehouses and factories. Nothing was left to the Japanese. In the opinion of experts, it will take years to restore the field, and new wells will have to be bored. The Palembang field was the backbone of Netherlands East Indies oil production. Out of the total oil production of the Indies of 60,000.000 barrels 66 per cent, came from Sumatra (Palembang), 23 per cent, from Borneo (Tarakan and Balikpapan), 10.5 per cent, from Java, and about 1 per cent, from Ceram. The Dutch East Indies, now almost entirely in Japanese hands, represented a huge outlay of capital, the Dutch investments alone amounting to about £300,000.000, and British and American to £100.000.000. The Dutch investments covered about £60,000,000 in rubber. £50.000,000 in sugar, £35,000.00 in tea. coffee, copra, palm oil, and cinchona (quinine). £8,000.000 in tobacco, and £7,000,000 in kapok, as well as £45,000.000 in banks, etc. The sugar and oil companies were among the most progressive in the East, paying high wages— for the East—and providing excellent living facilities, ' sports fields, pensions, medical supervision, and other benefits. The loss caused by the destruction of so much wealth will fall heavily on the natives and bring widespread distress to the East Indies. Whatever happens in the regions occupied by the Japanese the "New Order in Asia" will not be a better one than the old. Ravages of Malaria. The statement that the fall of Batan was due 'largely to the ravages of malaria among the American and Filipino troops is no doubt correct. Malaria is the curse of many tropical countries, and must have affected the European troops adversely wherever the malarial mosquito and the disease are endemic. This applies to certain parts of Malaya, Upper Siam, and Burma. Strangely enough, the coastal areas are less subject to malaria. Bangkok, the capital of Siam, and Rangoon, the largest city of Burma, for instance, with the low-lying districts round them, are infested with mosquitoes, but these, fortunately, are not of the malaria-bearing breed. Upper Siam, on the contrary, ana Upper Burma are both malarial? areas, while the region of the Upper Salween, where the river is crossed by the Burma Road, suffers from a pestilential variety of malaria, deadly in its effects. The best counter-agent to malaria is still quinine, the bulk of which comes from the cinchona plantations in Java, occupied now by the Japanese. Dry Heart of Burma. It is to be noted that the heart of Burma, where fighting is centred, is comparatively a dry area. From October to May is the dry season in Burma with the prevailing wind from the north-east. The change to the southwest monsoon comes at the end of May, but the great rains do not usually break until about the middle of June. While the west coast and south-west corner of Burma have a heavy rainfall, from 99 inches at Rangoon to 200 inches over Arakan, the rainfall in the centre of Burma, including Mandalay. is only from 20 to 30 inches. Hence there is not much prospect of the monsoon affecting the area through which the invaders are now moving. Similarly, in northern Siam the rainfall is much less than on the coast, and the rice crops some years fail through drought.