The Pittsburgh Press (June 19, 1945)
Immediate action urged on pipeline
Oil men favor work on Arabian projects
BAHREIN, Sheikhdom of Bahrein, Arabia – That proposed American pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean should be built immediately, according to oil and construction personnel here whose task is to develop concessions recently gained along the Gulf’s western shore.
All right-of-way clearances through Saudi Arabia, British-mandated Transjordania and British-mandated Palestine should be secured by our State Department, they believe, but the government, while pledging defense of the line as a strategic necessity, should not invest public funds unless the companies forfeit their opportunity.
“We can’t imagine what is holding up the line, unless it is political difficulties,” said one oil geologist just returned from Mesopotamia where our oilfields total less than 25 percent. “As a construction problem, it is far easier than the ‘Inch’ lines built back home. It would only be a few feet above sea level except where it crossed the Palestine mountains now passed by the British pipeline of the Iraq Petroleum Company.”
One engineer said that a 10-inch line, but in a year, would cost about $130 million.
Asked why the companies, rather than the government loan proposed by Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, should pay for the line, one oil workman said:
There isn’t any money risk here, as the pipeline will pay off, so why borrow governmental money? The companies are willing to put it up, since the Arabian and Kuwait fields will be good for at least two generations.