MEXICAN OIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1938, Page 7

MEXICAN OIL

DECISION OF COMPANIES ATTACK ON EXPROPRIATION DECREE LEGAL' ACTION TAKEN By Telegraph—Press Assn., Copyright. MEXICO CITY, March 31. Seventeen American and English oil companies have announced that they are taking legal steps to set aside the decree expropriating their properties. Mr F. W. Rickett, of Ethiopian oil deal fame, conferred with the Government, which offered large contracts for Government-produced oil priced well below world prices.

The impression prevails that should the scheme prove sufficiently successful to provide funds to pay the expropriated companies a solution might be found. Otherwise the courts are likely to nullify or ameliorate the decree in order to take the Government out of the serious predicament precipitated by the seizure. The expropriated companies announced that they would place an embargo on oils exported from their properties, although it is believed this would be difficult in the event of transshipments by a third country.

A political sensation was caused at the end of August, 1935, when Italy’s aggressive attitude toward Abyssinia was creating great concern, by an anouncement that Mr F. W. Rickett, a Londoner, known as the “Lawrence of Finance,” had secured from the Emperor Haile Selassie sole rights to oil, mineral and other natural resources in half the Abyssinian Empire for a period of 75 years. Mr. Rickett was acting as envoy of the African Exploitation and Development Company, an American concern. It was generally considered that the concession was a move on Haile Selassie’s part to accentuate American and British interest in preserving peace between Italy and Abyssinia. Britain, however, immediately advised the Emperor to withhold the concession, and the United States Government refused to become involved in the dispute. It was subsequent- ' ly announced by the American Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, that as the result of discussions he had with oil company officials they had agreed to withdraw from the concession, the news being welcomed in Europe as removing an embarrassing complication' from the Abyssinian situation.