OIL FROM IRAQ

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18067, 19 April 1933, Page 7

OIL FROM IRAQ

DESERT PIPE-LINE WILL COST £10,000,000 , • LONDON, April 8. 1 The £10,000,000 pipe-line which the Iraq 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 Kirkuk to Haditha, wliero it divides, one section going to Haifa, 620 miles away, and the other to Tripoli, 540 miles away, each going through 300 miles of desert. Whilo 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, necessitating the construction of hundreds of miles of metalled roads to carry lorries and huge construction machines. Three thousand men are at present turning the Arab village of Mafrak into a replica of Kantara in war time. ■ The pipe-laying involves four main operations. The stringing of the 12in. pipes along the. desert is proceeding at the rate of nearly a mile a day. Each piece of pipe, 40ft. long, weighs almost a ton. Then tho ditching is performed by <j) remarkable machine which makes furrows across. the desert at the rate of a mile a day until it strikes lava rock which must’ bo blasted. Arabs follow, widening and deepening the ditch. Next come weldors using giant apparatus, brought to white heat by a travelling generator, after which the pipes, painted and tarred and wrapped in asphalt and canvas, are finally buried by another machine.

Twelve pumping machines "ill be in stalled 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 bo avoided.