OIL FROM MOSUL

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 April 1933, Page 2

OIL FROM MOSUL

t DESERT ENTERPRISE. >• The construction, which has just ) been begun by the Iraq Petroleum [ Company, of a pipe line to bring oil - from the Mosul oilfield to the Mediterranean (writes a correspondent of the London “Times”), is one of the most important projects of its kind which have yet been undertaken. It involves laying heavy steel pipes over a distance of nearly 1,200 miles, a great part of which lies in rocky and waterless desert. A little imagination is required to realise what this means. The pipes, each of which weighs nearly a ton, have to be hauled by motor transport to wherever they have to be laid. When engineers are constructing a road they follow the easiest gradients and avoid inconvenient obstacles. Not so the constructors of a pipe line. They have to work straight forward; consequently the tractors which haul the pipes have to go up hill and down dale, over rocks and into deep nullahs, following a line drawn on a map. Every 10yds they have to stop aiid drop a pipe, and when their load is finished they have to go back over the same road and, fetch another. With every trip their journey lengthens, until they may be plying backwards and forwards over more than 100 miles of desert between the base camp and pipe head. When the pipes are strung gangs of men dig a trench in which to bury them. Digging a trench through solid or loose boulders is no easy job. It calls for explosives and pneumatic drills. Then come the welding gangs, which join the pipes together and lay them in the trench. They need electrical plant and cranes to handle the pipes. All this plant is not stationary, but constantly shifting over difficult ground. The gangs of men need stores and. water, the tractors need petrol, oil, and spare parts, and all this is in the heart of a. desert. About 120,000 tons of pipe have to be moved under these conditions, and a preliminary to it is the laying of 1,000 miles of light telephone over the track, to be followed so that the working parties can always be in communication with their headquarters. Already there are 6,000 men at. work. By the middle of this year there will be 20,000. Ton million pounds are spoken of as the probable cost. The establishment of the company’s organisation for the task has caused some stir in the Middle East. At Bagdad, as well as at. Haifa, and Tripolis, the two Mediterranean termini of the line, people are speculating on what, this enterprise will mean—what wealth, it. will bring to these parts, and how far the barren country which ' the line traverses will be opened up 1 for the future. The Arabs whose ter- 1 ritory it touches must be wondering 1 too; but they keep their thoughts to ’ themselves. For the present they are I clearly satisfied that it brings them E work and money. It