OIL IN IRAQ

Evening Star, Issue 19765, 16 January 1928, Page 5

OIL IN IRAQ

AGREEMENT WITH FRANCE Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. ■ _ PARIS, January 14. M. Briand has announced that he ie shortly signing a Franco-American-Britisn agreement giving France a direct share in the working of the Iraq oilfields on an equal footing with British and American interests. He said that an oil gusher recently struck near the village of Baba Guergou, in Mosul, produced 3,600 metric tons of petrol in three days. Experts estimated that it is capable of producing 3,600,000 tons a year. As France is entitled to 23.75 per cent, of all Mosul oil, it is hoped that this single well furnish almost half the annual French importations, amounting to 2,000,000 tons a year. M. Briand added that in addition to this well about 100 others have been drilled, and if these are good producers the French Government or its agents might even become oil exporters.

THE ECONOMIC SITUATION,

PARIS, January 14. ‘Lo Matin,’ commenting on M. Briand’s oil statement, says that when the pipe line, which must be constructed between Mosul and the Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf, is completed the economic situation will be transformed.