(See Cover)
In the subterranean world of petroleum, it is the international oilmen who play the blue-chip game. The players must back their gambling spirit with refineries, tankers, filling stations — and millions in hard cash. In this blue-chip game, the jackpot is the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the string of tiny sheikdoms in the rolling sand dunes around the Persian Gulf — Bahrein, Kuwait and Qatar (pronounced gutter).
Under these scorching deserts lies an ocean of oil, the fabulous wealth of the Arabian Nights. The ocean contains a minimum of 26 billion barrels (1¼ times the proved reserves of the U.S.), a maximum of 150 billion barrels. How much is this worth? In cash, enough to make a hundred Rockefellers; as a military asset, as nations count, it is beyond price.
This jackpot has not lacked for players.
The Nazis tried to sweep the tables in World War II by Rommel's drive into Egypt. The Russians placed a tentative bet only a year ago, lost out with their fiasco in Azerbaijan, Iran. Now Russia has raised the ante by threatening Greece and Turkey. Last week, President Truman dealt in the U.S. — in a diplomatic way —by asking for a $400,000,000 loan to Greece and Turkey, accompanied by mili tary advisers and weapons (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). The loud talk was all of Greece and Turkey, but the whispers be hind the talk were of the ocean of oil to the south.
New Deck. As the U.S. prepared to make its historic move, a potent group of U.S. oil companies also came to a historic decision. With the tacit approval of the U.S. and British Governments, the companies concluded a series of deals — biggest ever made in the blue-chip game — to develop and put to full use this ocean of oil.
Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), world's biggest oil company, was the natural leader of the group; as Standard's internationally minded president, Eugene Holman, was the one who had a big hand in drafting the breath-taking plans. Jersey Standard and its partners were going to spend upwards of $300,000,000 in the stormy Middle East to bring out the oil.
As free-enterprising businessmen, their hardheaded purpose was to make money. But as internationalists, they were well aware of the political implications. By making the oil available to all the world (Russia would be able to buy as cheaply as anyone else), they would do their part to clear the political air. By bringing the tangible benefits of free enterprise to the desert lands, where starvation and disease are as ever-present as heat, they would make friends and influence people where the U.S. sorely needed friends. As the London Economist summed up: "They should be offered the resources of Western technique in making their deserts once more blossom like the rose. Western democracy claims that it stands for a synthesis of enterprise, forethought and trusteeship. It will never have a better chance to prove its case."
High Hand. Up till now, the British have held the high hand in the jackpot 'game. The principal players are a complex mixture of governments and private companies :
¶ The oil concessions in Iran are owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., in which Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, bought control for the British Government in 1914.