OIL: Political Pipeline

Even before the Six-Day War of 1967 shut down the Suez Canal, Egyptians and oil men—to say nothing of their customers in the West—dreamed of a pipeline linking the Red and Mediterranean seas. Such a link (see map following page) would make unnecessary the costly circumnavigation of Africa by the giant tankers (too fat to fit the canal) that now deliver Arab oil to European refineries. It would also produce revenues that would go a long way toward filling the big hole left in the Egyptian treasury by the closing of the...