OIL — And A Troubled World

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 14 September 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

OIL — And A Troubled World

By F.E.B.M.

THIS is the Oil War. Tke 1914-18 conflict began and ended while the Oil Age was in its infancy. It undoubtedly stimulated the military mechanisation that is now winning battles on undreamtof scales, and thereby brought appreciably closer the reign of King Petroleum, but in itself it remained essentially a war of men's bodies and rifle bullets. Every nation that rejoices in the name of a Power has spent the last decade hoarding oil and jockeying for the right to buy it. Argumentive indeed would be he who declared that the present world-shaking conflict was not brought about directly by oil. The desire of the "have-not" nations for what they call "raw materials" is the reason why Hitler demanded colonies, why Italy stabbed the Allies so treacherously in the back. Fight For Oil The "Drang nach oaten" was a plan to reach the wheatflelds of the Ukraine —and the oil wells of Batum. The seizure of country after country by the Nazis was only step and step in their march to European domination, which would lead them to the pinnacle of power where they could direct their lightning stroke against the apparently slow-thinking democracies of the West, holders of the world's oil trade. Everv day's cables, every Daventry broadcast, tells of air raids on the German oil stocks. Freezing of the Danube, great highway for conveyance of Rumanian oil to Central Europe, was hot news. Prime consideration in the German-Russian Pact _ of last August was delivery of Soviet oil to the Nazis. Every week comes news of tankers torpedoed —Allied and enemy. At home here in New Zealand we see the repercussions, as every Empire country has f6lt them, albeit less than the war-mad Powers of Europe. We have our petrol restrictions and ap-

peal* for economy by our own Ministers, in the Press, over the radio and in cinema news reels. Not only has oil been a principal factor in the set-up and conduct of this war, but it has caused many international crises which threw nations to the brink of war. It's Happened Before In 1935 oil almost precipitated a European war, when Britain and France tried to get the League of Nations into an oil-sanctions-against-Italy frame of mind as a sequence to Mussolini's brutal invasion of Ethiopia. It worked for peace at least once, when Dictator-President Gomez, who literally owned the whole of Venezuela, paid off his country's entire National Debt by its means. The tale of oil, however, is one of tragedy and intrigue, rather than of honour. A few American oil barges were being convoyed up a Chinese river by a United States naval gunboat, the Panay, in 1937. The Japanese thought them sufficiently important to bombresult, a first-clas? international crisis between Tokyo and Washington over the loss of the Panay and a number of her complement. . , Early in 1938 oil gave His Britannic Majesty's Government another serious headache. That was when the Mexican Government— avowedly Communist, but not exactly of the Moscow variety of. Redness —followed the Shah of Iran's lead in cancelling the great British oil concessions. However, whereas th-1 Shah, fanatically concerned with the advancement of his own people, renewed the leases on receipt of greater royalties, the Mexican coup involved confiscation of wells, marketable oil and machinery. President Cardenas preferred to trade his new oil for German "typewriters rather than sell it to the Englishmen whom he had despoiled. American interests were also penalised by the confiscation, but Washington's stern attitude secured a compromise.

Remembering the desperate last-min-ute gamble made by a somewhat dubious but none the le3s wealthy Englishman, Leo Chertok, to claim oil concessions from Haile Silassie just before Italy overwhelmed the 6000-year-old country of the "Conquering Lion of Judah," one may wonder how much oil Mussolini has secured from his new provincial emjr ? re. Benito sent his Italian legions, at dawn on a Good Friday, into defenceless little Albania, adding the lustre of a three-day conquest to a name already made "glorious" by the four months' campaign in Ethiopia and the two years' civil war in Spain. Spain gave him a strong ally and strategic advantages, Ethiopia gave him the glory of conquest and a new colony to settle and develop, Albania gave him —oil! Albania gave Mussolini oil—but here's the rub! That oil was surveyed and tested ten years before by British technicians at the behest of Sir Henri Deterding, the "Oil Napoleon," and was rejected as a source of supply because of its poor quality! Nor was it extremely plentiful. Position in 1938 We cannot survey the world's oil production and consumption wartime, but a comparison with the "peak" peace year, 1938, will be interesting. Remember, that every nation knew war was in the offing and was feverishly building up supplies. In 1938, then, the world produced well over 2,000,000,000 barrels of oil. Sixty per cent came from the U.S.A. Next came Soviet Russia, with 200,000,000 barrels, followed closely by Venezuela. Much further down the list came Iran, the Dutch East Indies, Rumania (sixth on the roster), Iraq, Colombia, and so on. In all, 24 countries produced more than 1,000,000 barrels apiece. Apart from the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., it has. been a case of the have-nots needing oil and the haves not using all the oil they produce Germany's truly Herculean efforts pro duced only 12,000,000 barrels (syn thetically and otherwise) in 1933, but she used four times that amount. (This

estimate was based on a pre-war foreign conception of Germany's motorised needs, which has since been proved to have been hopelessly conservative. )

Japan produced 3,000,000 barrels in 1938—but used 40,000,000.

Italy, producing less than half a million, used 20,000,000 barrels.

France was in even a worse state, producing a slim 500,000 barrels and using a hundred times as many. East Indian Oil

Britain used more than any of them, except America and Russia. Her 100,000,000 barrels were all imported, apart from a few thousand from synthetic sources. From Iran and Iraq, from the Dutch East Indies, from Rumania, Venezuela, the United States —even from the Soviet wells at Batum, in Caucasia, flowed a stream of oil to Albion.

One would think that these great stocks of oil would keep a nation fight-ing-efficient for years. Perhaps they would, for Britain alone must have hundreds of millions yet in reserve— but they must be kept replenished.

With Japan dissatisfied at the 2,000,000 barrels she produces from her half of Sakhalin Island (the rest is owned by the Soviet), covetous Oriental eyes must look southwards to the iiutch East Indies. When she ends her amazing conquest of China, as she may do in the near future, and finds that her thinly-disguised blockade of French Indo-China and Cochin-China and Cambodia is effective, will she not be tempted to look at those fabulously rich "Spice Islands?"

Those magic names—Java, Sumatra. Bali, Borneo, the Celebes, New Guinea —are synonymous with 50,000,000 untrained natives, with boundless growing capacity for rice and millet, with rubber plantations, with iron, nickel and manganese, and with 50,000,000 barrels of oil annually.

No New Zealander can afford not to look at the world's oil map. The Pacific is a cardinal centre of strategy in the struggle for oil, with "haves" and "have-nots", within its confines. The implications of a foreign seizure of the Dutch East Indies are so patent even to the lay mind that plans for their defence must be worked out in sonjunction with our own.