WORLD’S FUEL

Southland Times, Issue 20146, 5 April 1927, Page 2

WORLD’S FUEL

PETROLEUxM SUPPLIES. THE PERSIAN FIELD. BRITISH COLLABORATION. London, January 26. Sir John Cadman, chairman-designate of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, drew a picture of a world without petroleum, in an after-lunch address on “Oil from the Empire Point of View,” delivered to members of the Royal Colonial Institute.

Sir John asked his audience to consider what would happen if the world were suddenly deprived of petroleum. Civilisation, as it stood to-day, would for a time almost come to a stop. There would be no motoring, no aviation; more than 25,000,000 motor vehicles would instantly form a widely dispersed scrap-heap. Without petroleum another coal strike would not only shake the structure of our industrial existence, but might shatter it beyond repair. Without it the wheels of every factory would slacken and stop, and the navies of the world would fall derelict, permitting heaven knows what grotesque balance of power to emerge from the resultant confusion. Without, it, again, the hopes of human progress, based upon the civilising power of improved transport, would fade and evaporate; and last, but not least, a large proportion of the world’s inhabitants would be robbed of that k’mdly artificial light and handy fuel which to-day brought comfort to the four corners of the globe.

It was, he thought, reasonably safe to predict that the “to-morrow” of petroleum would far outshine the brilliance that today attended its achievements, and that the ultimate destiny of coal must be its conversion into oil and petroleum products, and gas, leaving a residue which had no

calorific value at all. The so-called antagonism between coal and oil he had always regarded as a profound illusion, and he welcomed the dawn of a new era, in which comparable oil products might well be obtained from coal as from natural oil. If they looked at the map of the world today in terms of oil, they had to admit reluctantly that it was predominantly American, but in the light of the knowledge they possessed they in the British Empire were entitled to look for results comparable to those of the United States.

THE PERSIAN FIELD. Commenting on the Government’s holding as an ordinary shareholder in the AngloPersian Oil Company, Sir John gave some interesting details of the transformation that had been effected as the result of British collaboration in Persia. A rocky wilderness, he said, had become a flourishing area of industrial activity which now stood revealed as one of the richest single oilfields of the world. About 25,000 people were employed in the oil industry there, the great bulk of whom, except for 1000 Europeans, were of Persian nationality. If those dependent on wage-earners were included, a total of some 150,000 Persians was involved. The whole fabric was being built up on the basis of British tradition, and it was a prime factor in the company’s policy to maintain friendly relations with the Persian people. “Let no one imagine,” he concluded, “that the company is in any way an instrument of the Government, to be employed with Machiavellian tortuousness in attaining obscure political objectives. It is very definitely nothing of the sort. It is purely commercial industry conducted for strictly commercial ends on severely commercial lines. I can give you the most categorical assurance that in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company the touchstone of commercial return is applied to every proposition with the most rigid impartiality. Human judgment is fallable, and its fruits arc unequal; but of the company —as, I trust, of every great company of purely British constitution —it can be affirmed that its motives are clean and its objective is plain to all men.”