On Wednesday Sir Roger Stevens left London for Teheran, the
first British ambassador there since the autumn of 1952. On the same day the party of Western oil experts who have been visiting Abadan left .Persia for London with their plans for getting the installations working again. A day or two earlier General Zahedi observed that it was unreasonable for Persians " sitting on a gold mine of oil " to continue in such 'poverty, and since then he has opposed with vigour Mullah Kashani's contention that the return of the British must mean the return of British influence in Persia. In London the repre- sentatives of the eight oil companies (the five principal American concerns and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the Royal Dutch Shell Company and The Compagnie Francais° des Petroles) which form the proposed consortium for the marketing of Persian oil will shortly be considering their technical experts' report. Apparently it will cost 60,000,000 'dollars to put the refinery in order again. If the general 'principles of marketing have been agreed, the next questions to answer are where the money is to come from, where the oil, if and when it flows again, is to be sold, and in what quantity. The oil is said not to be needed by the West, but Persian stability is needed. The advantages of clearing the Abadan :pipe-line are fairly evenly distributed on both sides : there is every hope that a reasonable settlement may be reached.
Previous page
