PERSIAN OILFIELDS

Evening Star, Issue 21319, 25 January 1933, Page 7

PERSIAN OILFIELDS

DISPUTE WITH BRITAIN

GENEVA PROCEEDINGS

(British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright

RUGBY, January 24 (Received January 25, at noon.)

The League Council appointed Dr Benes (Czecho-Slovakia) rapporteur on the dispute between Britain and Persia regarding the repudiation of the AngloPersian Company’s contract. The matter will be taken up by the council on Thursday. The Persian delegation at Geneva has already revealed some of the arguments by which it hopes to justify the repudiation of the contract and its contention that the company ought to have had recourse to the Persian courts, and that the case is not one with which the League ought to deal. It appears that many of the. statements contained in the Persian Government’s memorandum are based on misunderstanding, and it is hoped that a majority of the points will easily be cleared up upon explanation in the conciliatory atmosphere of the League. Sir John Simon will justify the action of the British Government in bringing the case before the League, a course of action which, it is hoped in London, will produce an amicable and equitable settlement beneficial to both parties.

Some surprise was caused in London by the statement that the Persian Government’s memorandum on the AngloPersian dispute was confined to the extraction of oil for over thirty years to an area of little more than one square mile, and the contention that the company intended to develop the concession to the fullest possible limits. Actually the area of the company’s Persian oilfields, from the whole of which oil is now being extracted, amounts to about 150 square miles. The company technically examined over 130,000 square miles, drilled 140,000 ft, carried out 380 geological surveys, and spent £3,500,000 on work of this character outside the two proved producing oilfields.