COLOMBIA: Priced Out

In six months seven U.S. oil companies have folded their rigs and suspended drilling in Colombia. Last week Shell, having sunk $90 million trying to get profitably established, announced that it was forced to curtail operations. That left only two small outfits drilling for new fields in Colombia. Three big U.S. companies (Socony-Vacuum, Texaco and Jersey Standard's Tropical) have put too much money into old, producing fields to pull out now; but they have virtually given up trying to find new oil for the present.

Reason for suspension was that Colombia had just about succeeded in pricing itself out of...

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