THE OIL INDUSTRY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 285, 30 October 1934, Page 7

THE OIL INDUSTRY

WHERE JAPAN STANDS.

DEMANDS ON COMPANIES

REPRESENTATIONS MADE.

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received October 30, 11.35 a.m. RUGBY, Oct. 29.

Certain aspects of the Japanese petroleum industry law of March 27 have recently been the subject of representations made in Tokio on behalf of the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the Netherlands, the interests of whose nationals are liable to be adversely affected. The main objects of the new law appear to be an accumulation in interests of the Japanese Government and, at the expense of foreign oil companies, of vast reserves of oil and the encouragement of the oil refining industry in Japan. Extensive powers of control over the industry enable the Japanese Government to fix sales prices, to determine quotas of oil imports allotted annually to any given company, to force the oil companies to expand their storage plant in ease of necessity, and to set up refineries in Japan. _ The principal foreign oil interests concerned are required to incur heavy expenditure on the erection of additional storage tanks and increase their oil stocks to about three times the present volume without receiving any security. They may not be able to recoup themselves for this large expenditure, indeed there is no guarantee that after the expenditure has been incurred the Japanese Government, by arbitrarily fixing sales prices and limiting the quota of trade annually allotted to the companies, may not actually prevent them from so recouping themselves.