OIL FOR JAPAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1940, Page 5

OIL FOR JAPAN

POSITION OF NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES NEW DEMANDS FROM TOKIO EXPECTED. DUTCH DETERMINED NOT TO HELP AXIS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) NEW YORK, December 26. The Batavia correspondent of the “New York Times” says that officials there are certain that the question of oil exports from the Dutch East Indies to Japan will be reopened with the arrival of Mr Yoshizawa, the new chief delegate, and the other new members of Japan’s so-called economic mission.

The departing Consul-General. Mr Saito, openly declared that Japan is very dissatisfied with the oil agreement obtained ' last autumn by the former delegate, Mr Kobayashi. Mr Saito added: “Certainly that question will be reopened, while the question of exports of rubber, tin, manganese and other war necessities which are acutely needed by Japan and Germany is a secondary consideration.” “The Times” correspondent adds that the Dutch will stoutly resist Japanese demands for reconsideration of the oil allotment and also demands for essential war materials beyond Japan's -needs. If Japan’s pressure becomes intolerable the negotiations will be broken off and the details of the demands and other exerting of pressure will be publicised throughout the world. The British and American companies operating fields and refineries under concessions from the Government have already made long-term contracts to deliver their entire outputs of aviation gasoline and crude oil to Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa and the Straits Settlemenrt.

The concessions prescribe that the Netherlands authorities shall have first call on their production “only in the event of a national emergency.” It might technically be claimed that the Japanese pressure could be termed an emergency, but the Netherlands administration will refuse because of their determination not to aid the Axis.

Japan is particularly irked by a provision of the original oil agreement under which she is forced to provide her own tankers and pay for her purchases in American dollars. MATERIAL RESOURCES MOBILISATION PLAN BEING REVISED. OPTIMISM NOT WARRANTED. (Received This Day, 9.20 a.m.) TOKIO, December 27. Cabinet has directed a revision of the material resources mobilisation plan for the last quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31 to counteract United States'embargoes and pressure on trade with British Crown colonies. The revision requires an additional steel output, a new rice supply plan,' an intensive and extensive development of' ore deposits to enable the elimination of dependence on foreign scrap and purchases of high-grade coal from China and Manchukuo.

The planning board president, Mr Naoki Hoshino, stressed the importance of speeding up the installation of ore processing machinery at the existing blast furnaces. “Optimism is unwarranted at the moment when Japan is on the verge of her fifth year of the China affair and there are demands for steel in huge quantities for national defence and other purposes,” he said.