THE WORLD’S PETROL

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 November 1936, Page 2

THE WORLD’S PETROL

MEN IN CONTROL Half a dozen men in Great Britain and the United States virtually control the world’s supplies of oil. The men behind the world’s fuel taps may yet be the ones who will control the destinies of nations, states a writer in the Melbourne “Herald.” The "king of kings” in the oil world is unquestionably Walter Clark Teagle, president of the Standard. Oil Company of New ersey, the organisation formed by John Rockfeller. He is fifty-eight, and has held his present post since 1917. Born in Cleverland and a graduate of Cornell University, Teagle was interested in oil even as a youth. But it was not until 1903 that be joined Rockfeller. His rise was rapid. A man of great organising ability with plenty of he impressed even the great kuvufeller himself. He controls £130,00,000 of capital. 200 oil tankers, and oil wells in almost every country in Europe and the Americas’. The ramifications of his business would make ordinary men dizzy, but Teagle is never ruffled. He is now a millionaire ten times over.

Edward George Seubert, the head of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, another vast concern, is a bachelor. His career has been a romance. He began as a humble clerk in the company at the age of fifteen, rose to boecome a director at thirtyfive, and became president in 1927, when he was fifty-one.

“What Seubert does not know about oil would not fill a thimble,” was an American’s comment on this oil magnate. Cultured and well read, with a quiet, restrained manner, Seubert is very popular. He lives in Chicago and collects books and pictures.

In Europe, Sir Henri Deterding, Sir John Cadman. Viscount Bearsted, and Sir Andrew Agnew are the big oil men. Sir Henri Deterding, directorgeneral of the Royal Dutch Company, a mammoth organisation, is rightly proud of being an “International Oil Man." He recently wrote a book with this title. He is a director of about fifty oil companies operating in all parts of the world. A native of Amsterdam, Sir Henri is now seventy, although nobody seeing him would believe it. He is more than a match for the powerful American oil interests. With a house in Park Lane and another at Ascot, he is a well-known and popular social figure in England. He travels extensively, for he likes to see things for himself, and he has three sons and two daughters. Sir John Cadman is the chairman of the powerful Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and also director of many other oil concerns. Born in Staffordshire. Sir John has been the architect of his own fortunes. He is only fifty-eight, has been an inspector of mines, and a professor at Birmingham University. He is virtually oil adviser to the British Government. Viscount Bearsted is chairman of the £25,000,000 Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company, and is also director of many other oil undertakings. He succeeded his father, the first Viscount, in 1927. He is perhaps not quite as absorbed in business as his father was, but his influence in the oil world is great. He was one of the first to realise the potentialities of Venezuela. In 1919 that country produced 476,000 barrels of crude oil. To-day it is producing 120,000.000 barrels, and before the depression the output was 137,000,000 barrels. Bearsted is chairman of the Venezuela Oil Concessions, Extremely rich, he has three palatial homes in Britain, and is a great host. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he has one of the shrewdest business brains in the world.

Sii’ Andrew Agnew, a Scotsman of fifty-four, is on the boards of more than seventy oil companies, including the Anglo-Persian, and is a man of immense importance. To him is usually left the negotiations of European oil concerns with those in America—a land where he is held in high respect. He has a fine house in Regent’s Park, and is well liked in the big business world.

If the long-threatened oil war ever begins in earnest, British interests will be well protected by these four oil kings. None of them has anything to learn from America.