DEAD SEA DEPOSITS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20251, 10 May 1929, Page 11

DEAD SEA DEPOSITS.

A LENGTHY CONCESSION.

PERIOD OF 75 YEARS. British Wireless. RUGBY, May 8. The documents relating to the Dead Sea salts concession were issued to-day. They show that the concession is to be for 75 years.

Mr. W. G. Ormsby-Gorc, UnderSecretary for the Colonics, stated in tho House of Commons on March 13 that a reply had been received from the Government of Transjordania respecting tho question of tho Dead Sea concessions. That Government and tho Palestine Government had authorised tho conclusion of draft agreement. Mr. OrmsbyGore said his department hoped to bo in a position to make a definite offer to the prospective concessionaires at an early date. If tho offer were accepted and if other matters were satisfactorily arranged, the concession would be duly sanctioned. Tho concession had been offered provisionally to Major Tulloch and Mr. Moses Novomeysky, a resident of Palestine, in equal shares. lie had no reason to doubt that they could raise necessary capital. Tho Under-Secretary was asked whether tho final agreement then being considered by the Government of Palestine contained provisions to ensure permanent British control and avoidance of a monopoly of control by any group or organisation interested in tho production or salo of potash. He replied that in view of the terms of the mandate it was not thought practicable to add provisions for British control. Any concession that was granted, however, would provide that tho operating company should not, without the previous written consent of tho Governments of Palestine and Transjordania, enter into any arrangement for 1 a restriction of output, or for the raising or keeping up of prices in such a manner as to restrict the output. Tho salts which tho Jordan has been washing down for centuries into a lake, the waters of which have no outlet except by evaporation, have remained in rich deposits, which, it is said, can certainly be extracted and marketed on a profitable commercial basis, The principal substances are potash, magnesium and bromide, and of these by far the most important is potash, an indispensable fertiliser of which the world's existing supplies are unequal to the world's existing needs. Consumption at any rato would certainly increase substantially if the prico were brought down by an increase of tho world's supply, unless the Dead Sea potash, when once the enterprise for extracting it takes shape, should by some understanding of the cartel type bo worked in such relationship with existing concerns in Germany as to maintain prices artificially at their present level.