DESERT PIPE-LINE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 107, 19 April 1933, Page 3

DESERT PIPE-LINE

IRAK OIL ENTERPRISE. HUGE COST INVOLVED. LONDON, April 11. The £10,000,000 pipe-line which the I Irak Petroleum Company is laying to the Mediterranean is the most remarkable enterprise in the Middle East to-day, says the Palestine correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.’’ The line runs from Kirkup to Haditha. where it divides, one section going to Haifa, 620 miles away, and the other to Tripoli, 540 miles away. Each passes through 300 miles of desert. While the Tripoli line passes under a great lava bed which resembles a shelled area, thousands of workers in the desert must receive water and supplies from more hospitable lands, neeesi sitating the construction of hundreds l of miles of metalled roads to carry lorries and huge construction machines. Three thousand men at present are turning the Arab village of Mafrak into a replica of Kantara in wartime. The pipe-laying involves four main , operations. ■ The stringing of the 12in. pipes ■ along the desert is proceeding at the I rate of nearly a mile a day. Each I piece of pipe, 40ft. long weighs almost ' almost n ton. Then the ditching is performed by a remarkable machine which makes furrows across the desert at a rate . of a mile a day until it strikes lava i rock, which must be blasted. Arabs i follow, widening and deepening the j ditch. Next come welders using giant apparatus. brought to white heat by a travelling generator, after which the

I pipes, painted and tarred, and wrapped in asphalt and canvas, arc finally buried by another machine. Twelve pumping machines will bo installed at various points, to force oil through the pipes. The pipe-line will enable Suez Canal dues amounting to £1,000,000 a year to be avoided.