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CAPTAIN MORGAN....nuff said
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Anglo-Persian Oil Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company using the oil reserves of the Middle East. APOC was renamed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954, as one root of the BP Company today.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 The D'Arcy Oil Concession
o 1.1 Exploration and discovery
o 1.2 Creation of APOC
o 1.3 Renegotiating of terms by Iran
o 1.4 1933 agreement
* 2 Nationalization and coup
o 2.1 Iranian unhappiness
o 2.2 Nationalization
o 2.3 Coup
o 2.4 Consortium
* 3 Subsidiary companies
o 3.1 Scottish Oils Ltd
* 4 Tanker fleet
* 5 See also
* 6 References
[edit] The D'Arcy Oil Concession
[edit] Exploration and discovery
In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with the Shah Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000, an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits.[1]
D'Arcy hired George Reynolds to do the prospecting in the Iranian desert. Conditions were extremely harsh: "small pox raged, bandits and warlords ruled, water was all but unavailable, and temperatures often soared past 50°C".[2] After several years of prospecting, D'Arcy's fortune dwindled away and he was forced to sell most of his rights to a Glasgow-based syndicate, the Burmah Oil Company."
By 1908 having sunk more than £500,000 into their Persian venture and found no oil, D'Arcy and Burmah decided to abandon exploration in Iran. In early May 1908 they sent Reynolds a telegram telling him that they had run out of money and ordering him to 'cease work, dismiss the staff, dismantle anything worth the cost of transporting to the coast for re-shipment, and come home.' Reynolds delayed following these orders and in a stroke of luck, struck oil shortly after on May 26, 1908.[3]
[edit] Creation of APOC
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Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)
Burmah Oil Company Ltd. created the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) as a subsidiary and also sold shares to the public.[4]
Volume production of Persian oil products eventually started in 1913 from a refinery built at Abadan, for its first 50 years the largest oil refinery in the world (see Abadan Refinery). In 1913, shortly before World War I, APOC managers negotiated with a new customer, the middle-aged Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. At Churchill's suggestion, and in exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in APOC. The British government became de facto hidden power behind the oil company.[5]
APOC took a 50% share in a new Turkish Petroleum Company organized in 1912 by Calouste Gulbenkian to explore and develop oil resources in the Ottoman Empire. After a hiatus caused by World War I it reformed and struck an immense gusher at Kirkuk, Iraq in 1927, renaming itself the Iraq Petroleum Company.
During this period, Iranian popular opposition to the D'Arcy oil concession and royalty terms whereby Iran only received 16 percent of net profits was widespread. Since industrial development and planning, as well as other fundamental reforms were predicated on oil revenues, the government's lack of control over the oil industry served to accentuate the Iranian Government's misgivings regarding the manner in which APOC cond
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Anglo-Persian Oil Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company using the oil reserves of the Middle East. APOC was renamed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954, as one root of the BP Company today.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 The D'Arcy Oil Concession
o 1.1 Exploration and discovery
o 1.2 Creation of APOC
o 1.3 Renegotiating of terms by Iran
o 1.4 1933 agreement
* 2 Nationalization and coup
o 2.1 Iranian unhappiness
o 2.2 Nationalization
o 2.3 Coup
o 2.4 Consortium
* 3 Subsidiary companies
o 3.1 Scottish Oils Ltd
* 4 Tanker fleet
* 5 See also
* 6 References
[edit] The D'Arcy Oil Concession
[edit] Exploration and discovery
In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with the Shah Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000, an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits.[1]
D'Arcy hired George Reynolds to do the prospecting in the Iranian desert. Conditions were extremely harsh: "small pox raged, bandits and warlords ruled, water was all but unavailable, and temperatures often soared past 50°C".[2] After several years of prospecting, D'Arcy's fortune dwindled away and he was forced to sell most of his rights to a Glasgow-based syndicate, the Burmah Oil Company."
By 1908 having sunk more than £500,000 into their Persian venture and found no oil, D'Arcy and Burmah decided to abandon exploration in Iran. In early May 1908 they sent Reynolds a telegram telling him that they had run out of money and ordering him to 'cease work, dismiss the staff, dismantle anything worth the cost of transporting to the coast for re-shipment, and come home.' Reynolds delayed following these orders and in a stroke of luck, struck oil shortly after on May 26, 1908.[3]
[edit] Creation of APOC
Question book-new.svg
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)
Burmah Oil Company Ltd. created the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) as a subsidiary and also sold shares to the public.[4]
Volume production of Persian oil products eventually started in 1913 from a refinery built at Abadan, for its first 50 years the largest oil refinery in the world (see Abadan Refinery). In 1913, shortly before World War I, APOC managers negotiated with a new customer, the middle-aged Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. At Churchill's suggestion, and in exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in APOC. The British government became de facto hidden power behind the oil company.[5]
APOC took a 50% share in a new Turkish Petroleum Company organized in 1912 by Calouste Gulbenkian to explore and develop oil resources in the Ottoman Empire. After a hiatus caused by World War I it reformed and struck an immense gusher at Kirkuk, Iraq in 1927, renaming itself the Iraq Petroleum Company.
During this period, Iranian popular opposition to the D'Arcy oil concession and royalty terms whereby Iran only received 16 percent of net profits was widespread. Since industrial development and planning, as well as other fundamental reforms were predicated on oil revenues, the government's lack of control over the oil industry served to accentuate the Iranian Government's misgivings regarding the manner in which APOC conducted its affairs in Iran. Such a pervasive atmosphere of dissatisfaction seemed to suggest that a radical revision of the concession terms would be possible. Moreover, owing to the introduction of reforms that improved fiscal order in Iran, APOC's past practice of cutting off advances in oil royalties when its demands were not met had lost much of its sting.
[edit] Renegotiating of terms by Iran
Question book-new.svg
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)
The attempt to revise the terms of the oil concession on a more favourable basis for Iran led to protracted negotiations that took place in Tehran, Lausanne, London and Paris between Abdolhossein Teymourtash, Iran's Minister of Court 1925-32 and its nominal Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Chairman of APOC, John Cadman, spanned 1928-32. The overarching argument for revisiting the terms of the D'Arcy Agreement on the Iranian side was that its national wealth was being squandered by a concession that was granted in 1901 by a previous non-constitutional government forced to agree to inequitable terms under duress. In order to buttress his position in talks with the British, Teymourtash retained the expertise of French and Swiss oil experts.
Iran demanded a revision of the terms whereby Iran would be granted 25% of APOC's total shares. To counter British objections, Teymourtash would state that "if this had been a new concession, the Persian Government would have insisted not on 25 percent but on a 50-50 basis. Teymourtash also asked for a minimum guaranteed interest of 12.5% on dividends from the shares of the company, plus 2s per ton of oil produced. In addition, he specified that the company was to reduce the existing area of the concession. The intent behind reducing the area of the concession was to push APOC operations to the southwest of the country so as to make it possible for Iran to approach and lure non-British oil companies to develop oilfields on more generous terms in areas not part of APOC's area of concession.
Apart from demanding a more equitable share of the profits of the Company, an issue that did not escape Teymourtash's attention was that that the flow of transactions between APOC and its various subsidiaries deprived Iran of gaining an accurate and reliable appreciation of APOC's full profits. As such, he demanded that the company register itself in Tehran as well as London, and the exclusive rights of transportation of the oil be cancelled. In fact in the midst of the negotiations in 1930, the Iranian Majles approved a bill whereby APOC was required to pay a 4 percent tax on its prospective profits earned in Iran.
In the face of British prevarication, Iran decided to demonstrate Iranian misgivings by upping the ante. Apart from encouraging the press to draft editorials criticizing the terms of the D'Arcy concession, a delegation consisting of Reza Shah and other political notables and journalists was dispatched to the vicinity of the oilfields to inaugurate a newly constructed road, with instructions that they refrain from visiting the oil installation in an explicit show of protest.
In 1931, Teymourtash who was travelling to Europe to enroll Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi at a Swiss boarding school, decided to use the occasion to attempt to conclude the negotiations. The following passage, from Cadman, confirms Teymourtash worked feverishly and diligently to resolve all outstanding issues, and succeeded in securing an agreement in principle:
He came to London, he wined and he dined and he spent day and night in negotiating. Many interviews took place. He married his daughter, he put his boy to school [Harrow], he met the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a change took place in our government, and in the midst of all this maze of activities we reached a tentative agreement on the principles to be included in the new document, leaving certain figures and the lump sum to be settled at a later date.
However, while Teymourtash likely believed that after four years of exhaustive and detailed discussions, he had succeeded in navigating the negotiations on the road to a conclusive end; the latest negotiations in London were to prove nothing more than a cul de sac.
Matters came to a head in 1931, when the combined effects of overabundant oil supplies on the global markets and the economic destabilization of the Depression, led to fluctuations which drastically reduced annual payments accruing to Iran to a fifth of what it had received in the previous year. In that year APOC informed the Iranian government that its royalties for the year would amount to a mere £366,782 while in the same period the company's income taxes paid to the British Government amounted to approximately £1,000,000. Furthermore, while the company's profits declined 36 percent for the year, the revenues paid to the Iranian government pursuant to the company's accounting practices, decreased by 76 percent. Such a precipitous drop in royalties appeared to confirm suspicions of bad faith, and Teymourtash indicated that the parties would have to revisit negotiations.
However, Reza Shah was soon to assert his authority by dramatically inserting himself into the negotiations. The Monarch attended a meeting of the Council of Ministers in November 1932, and after publicly rebuking Teymourtash for his failure to secure an agreement, dictated a letter to cabinet cancelling the D'Arcy Agreement. The Iranian Government notified APOC that it would cease further negotiations and demanded cancellation of the D'Arcy concession. Rejecting the cancellation, the British government espoused the claim on behalf of APOC and brought the dispute before the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague, asserting that it regarded itself "as entitled to take all such measures as the situation may demand for the Company's protection." At this point, Hassan Taqizadeh, the new Iranian Minister entrusted with the task of assuming responsibility for the oil dossier, was to intimate to the British the cancellation was simply meant to expedite negotiations and that it would constitute political suicide for Iran to withdraw from negotiations.
After the dispute between the two countries was taken up at the Hague, the Czech Foreign Minister who was appointed mediator put the matter into abeyance to allow the contending parties to attempt to resolve the dispute. Ironically, Reza Shah who had stood firm in demanding the abolishment of the D'Arcy concession, suddenly acquiesced to British demands, much to the chagrin and disappointment of his Cabinet. A new agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was agreed to after Cadman visited Iran in April 1933 and was granted a private audience with the Shah. A new agreement was ratified by Majles on May 28, 1933 and received Royal assent the following day.
[edit] 1933 agreement
Question book-new.svg
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)
The terms of the new agreement provided for a new 60-year concession. The Agreement reduced the area under APOC control to 100,000 square miles, required annual payments in lieu of Iranian income tax, as well as guaranteeing a minimum annual payment of £750,000 to the Iranian government. These provisions, while appearing favourable, are widely agreed to have represented a squandered opportunity for the Iranian government. The agreement extended the life of the D'Arcy concession by an additional 32 years, negligently allowed APOC to select the best 100,000 square miles, the minimum guaranteed royalty was far too modest, and in a fit of carelessness the company's operations were exempted from import or customs duties. Finally, Iran surrendered its right to annul the agreement, and settled on a complex and tediously elaborate arbitration process to settle any disagreements that would arise.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company continued its large Persian operations although it changed its name to the AIOC in 1935. By 1950 Abadan had become the world's largest refinery. In spite of diversification the AIOC still relied heavily on its Iranian oil fields for three-quarters of its supplies, and controlled all oil in Iran.
[edit] Nationalization and coup
[edit] Iranian unhappiness
By 1951 Iranian support for nationalization of the AIOC was intense. Grievances included the small fraction of revenues Iran received. In 1947, for example, AIOC reported after-tax profits of £40 million ($112 million) - and gave Iran just £7 million.[6]
Conditions for Iranian oil workers and their families were very bad. The director of Iran's Petroleum Institute wrote that
Wages were 50 cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick leave, no disability compensation. The workers lived in a shanty town called Kaghazabad, or Paper City, without running water or electricity, ... In winter the earth flooded and became a flat, perspiring lake. The mud in town was knee-deep, and ... when the rains subsided, clouds of nipping, small-winged flies rose from the stagnant water to fill the nostrils .... Summer was worse. ... The heat was torrid ... sticky and unrelenting - while the wind and sandstorms shipped off the desert hot as a blower. The dwellings of Kaghazabad, cobbled from rusted oil drums hammered flat, turned into sweltering ovens. ... In every crevice hung the foul, sulfurous stench of burning oil .... in Kaghazad there was nothing - not a tea shop, not a bath, not a single tree. The tiled reflecting pool and shaded central square that were part of every Iranian town, ... were missing here. The unpaved alleyways were emporiums for rats.[7]
Under the 1933 agreement with Reza Shah, AIOC had promised to give laborers better pay and more chance for advancement, build schools, hospitals, roads and telephone system. It had not done so.[6]
In May 1949 Britain had offered a "Supplemental oil agreement" which guaranteed royalty payments would not drop below £4 million, reduced the area in which it would be allowed to drill, and promised more Iranians would be trained for administrative positions." But gave Iran no "greater voice in company's management" or right to audit the company books. When the Iranian Prime Minister tried to dicker with AIOC head Sir William Fraser. Fraser "dismissed him" and flew back to UK.[8]
In late December 1950 word reached Tehran that the American-owned Arabian American Oil Company had agreed to share profits with Saudis on a 50-50 basis. The UK Foreign Office rejected the idea of any similar agreement for AIOC.[9]
By now expressions of Iranian anger against lack of support for nationalization included a distinct lack of mourning following the assassination of anti-nationalization prime minister Haj Ali Razmara,[10] and a raucous walkout of protest by newspaper reporters when a visiting American diplomat urged 'reason as well as enthusiasm' to deal with the British embargo of Iran.[11]
[edit] Nationalization
In March 1951, the Iranian parliament (the Majlis) voted to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and its holdings, and shortly thereafter elected a widely respected statesman and champion of nationalization, Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister.[12] This led to the Abadan Crisis where foreign countries refused to take Iranian oil and the Abadan refinery was closed. AIOC withdrew from Iran and increased output of its other reserves in the Persian Gulf.
Mossadeq broke off negotiations with AIOC in July 1951 when the AIOC threatened to pull its employees out of Iran and warned tanker owners that "the receipts from the Iranian government would not be accepted on the world market."[13] The British ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian government and explored the possibility of an invasion to occupy the oil area. US President Harry S. Truman and US ambassador to Iran Henry F. Grady opposed intervention in Iran but needed Britain's support for the Korean War. Efforts by the U.S. through the International Court of Justice were made to settle the dispute, but a 50/50 profit-sharing arrangement, with recognition of nationalization, was rejected by both the British government and Prime Minister Mossadegh.
As the months went on, the crisis became acute. By mid-1952 an attempt by the Shah to replace Mossadegh had backfired into riots nationwide; Mossadegh returned with even greater power. At the same time his coalition was "fraying," as Britain’s boycott of Iran eliminated a major source of government revenue and made Iranians "poorer and unhappier by the day."[14]
[edit] Coup
Main article: 1953 Iranian coup d'état
By 1953 both the US and the UK both had new, more anti-communist and more interventionist administrations. The United States no longer opposed intervention in Iran. Britain was unable to subvert Mossadegh as its embassy and officials had been evicted from Iran in October 1952, but successfully appealed in the U.S. to anti-communist sentiments, depicting both Mossadegh and Iran as unstable and likely to fall to communism in their weakened state. If Iran fell, the "enormous assets" of "Iranian oil production and reserves" would fall into Communist control, as would "in short order the other areas of the Middle East".[15] In August the American CIA with the help of bribes to politicians, soldiers, mobs, and newspapers, and contacts/information from the British embassy and secret service, organized a coup. The shah issued an edict removing Mosaddeq from power and General Fazlollah Zahedi, lead tanks to Mosaddeq's residence overthrowing him from office.
[edit] Consortium
With the new pro-Western Prime Minister, Fazlollah Zahedi, Iranian oil began flowing again and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later changed its name to British Petroleum, tried to return to its old position. However "public opinion was so opposed that the new government could not permit it." Instead an international consortium under the nationalized name (National Iranian Oil Company) was created, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company being just one member and holding 40% of the shares. The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran, "but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors."[16]
[edit] Subsidiary companies
[edit] Scottish Oils Ltd
Scottish Oils Ltd (owned by Anglo-Persian) was a producer of shale oil. It was formed between 1918 and 1920 by the merger of five smaller Scottish oil shale companies: Youngs, Broxburn, Pumpherston, Oakbank and Philpstoun.[17][18][19] Shale oil production in Scotland ceased in the early 1960s but there was an unsuccessful attempt to revive it in 1973.[20] The company still exists[21] but is no longer in the shale oil business.
[edit] Tanker fleet
The British Tanker Company Limited (BTC) was formed in 1915, after the Anglo-Persian Oil Company decided to become a fully self-contained operation, directly owning a fleet of tankers for sea transport. On formation, the BTC had an initial budget of $144,000 with which to build seven steam-powered tankers. The Company’s first tanker was the British Emperor, which was launched in 1916. The names of the first seven ships, and all later additions to the fleet, bore the prefix ‘British’. Over the next decade, the demand for oil grew throughout the developed world, and the BTC expanded accordingly. By 1924, the fleet numbered 60 ships, with the 60th being the flagship, 10,762 deadweight tonnes (dwt), British Aviator. She was the BTC’s first diesel engine oil tanker, and at that time was the most powerful single-screw motor ship in the world.
The economic depression of the early 1930s saw rising unemployment amongst merchant navies around the world. However, the BTC undertook a series of strategic mergers, and coupled with the continued support of the Shah of Iran, the APOC succeeded in strengthening its position within the industry. In 1939, the British government chartered the whole fleet of 93 tankers to supply fuel to its armed forces during the Second World War. The fleet lost a total of 42 ships sunk during the war.
Within a year of peace in 1945, the BTC fleet had returned to its pre-war total of 93 vessels. The recovery continued with the building of 57 new tankers, each 12,000 dwt, which increased the tonnage of oil transported from Abadan refinery in Iran, whilst remaining light enough for the tankers to pass through the shallow waters of the Suez Canal.
In 1951, however, the situation changed dramatically, when the Iranian oil industry was nationalised, and the APOC removed all its staff from Iran.
[edit] See also
* Anglo-Persian Agreement
* Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran
* National Iranian Oil Company
* Abadan Crisis timeline
* 1953 Iranian coup d'état
* Mohammad Mossadegh
* Hossein Fatemi
* Dariush Forouhar
* Operation Ajax
* Abdolhossein Teymourtash
* John Cadman, 1st Baron Cadman
[edit] References
1. ^ Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Stephen Kinzer, John Wiley and Sons, 2003, p.48
2. ^ Longhurst, Henry, Adventures in Oil: the story of British Petroleum, London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1959, p.21
3. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), pp.48-9
4. ^ Michael Gasson (Former Group Archivist, BP Archive). "Home: The BP Archive". Business History Links: Business Archives:. Association of Business Historians (abh). http://www.busman.qmul.ac.uk/abh/archive5.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
5. ^ "From Anglo-Persian Oil to BP Amoco" August 11, 1998 BBC
6. ^ a b Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.67
7. ^ (quoted in Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.67. source: Farmanfarmaian, Manucher, Blood and Oil: Inside the Shah's Iran, Modern Library, 1999, p.184-5 (Manucher Farmanfarmaian became director of Iran's petroleum institute in 1949)
8. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.68
9. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.76
10. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men, (2003), p.78-80
11. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men, (2003), p.106
12. ^ Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (1982), pp.55-6
13. ^ Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (1982), p.268
14. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), pp.135-6
15. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.158
16. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), pp.195-6
17. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PduotC73nh0C&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=%22Scottish+Oils+Ltd%22&source=web&ots=aqTFGGPn_b&sig=Enj0GAgWl3geT9h83D8oss_xe9s&hl=en
18. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j_Yty5JG4uIC&pg=PT175&lpg=PT175&dq=%22Scottish+Oils+Ltd%22&source=web&ots=HViM0451zD&sig=BUGtroGLm9dEQ2TY2RrGCJT3i90&hl=en
19. ^ Uphall On The Web - Scottish Oils
20. ^ Shale Oil Industry (Scotland) (Hansard, 4 December 1973)
21. ^ WebCHeck - Select and Access Company Information
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company"
Categories: Oil and gas companies of the United Kingdom | BP | Economic history of Iran
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Anglo-Persian Oil Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company using the oil reserves of the Middle East. APOC was renamed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954, as one root of the BP Company today.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 The D'Arcy Oil Concession
o 1.1 Exploration and discovery
o 1.2 Creation of APOC
o 1.3 Renegotiating of terms by Iran
o 1.4 1933 agreement
* 2 Nationalization and coup
o 2.1 Iranian unhappiness
o 2.2 Nationalization
o 2.3 Coup
o 2.4 Consortium
* 3 Subsidiary companies
o 3.1 Scottish Oils Ltd
* 4 Tanker fleet
* 5 See also
* 6 References
[edit] The D'Arcy Oil Concession
[edit] Exploration and discovery
In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with the Shah Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000, an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits.[1]
D'Arcy hired George Reynolds to do the prospecting in the Iranian desert. Conditions were extremely harsh: "small pox raged, bandits and warlords ruled, water was all but unavailable, and temperatures often soared past 50°C".[2] After several years of prospecting, D'Arcy's fortune dwindled away and he was forced to sell most of his rights to a Glasgow-based syndicate, the Burmah Oil Company."
By 1908 having sunk more than £500,000 into their Persian venture and found no oil, D'Arcy and Burmah decided to abandon exploration in Iran. In early May 1908 they sent Reynolds a telegram telling him that they had run out of money and ordering him to 'cease work, dismiss the staff, dismantle anything worth the cost of transporting to the coast for re-shipment, and come home.' Reynolds delayed following these orders and in a stroke of luck, struck oil shortly after on May 26, 1908.[3]
[edit] Creation of APOC
Question book-new.svg
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)
Burmah Oil Company Ltd. created the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) as a subsidiary and also sold shares to the public.[4]
Volume production of Persian oil products eventually started in 1913 from a refinery built at Abadan, for its first 50 years the largest oil refinery in the world (see Abadan Refinery). In 1913, shortly before World War I, APOC managers negotiated with a new customer, the middle-aged Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. At Churchill's suggestion, and in exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in APOC. The British government became de facto hidden power behind the oil company.[5]
APOC took a 50% share in a new Turkish Petroleum Company organized in 1912 by Calouste Gulbenkian to explore and develop oil resources in the Ottoman Empire. After a hiatus caused by World War I it reformed and struck an immense gusher at Kirkuk, Iraq in 1927, renaming itself the Iraq Petroleum Company.
During this period, Iranian popular opposition to the D'Arcy oil concession and royalty terms whereby Iran only received 16 percent of net profits was widespread. Since industrial development and planning, as well as other fundamental reforms were predicated on oil revenues, the government's lack of control over the oil industry served to accentuate the Iranian Government's misgivings regarding the manner in which APOC conducted its affairs in Iran. Such a pervasive atmosphere of dissatisfaction seemed to suggest that a radical revision of the concession terms would be possible. Moreover, owing to the introduction of reforms that improved fiscal order in Iran, APOC's past practice of cutting off advances in oil royalties when its demands were not met had lost much of its sting.
[edit] Renegotiating of terms by Iran
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The attempt to revise the terms of the oil concession on a more favourable basis for Iran led to protracted negotiations that took place in Tehran, Lausanne, London and Paris between Abdolhossein Teymourtash, Iran's Minister of Court 1925-32 and its nominal Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Chairman of APOC, John Cadman, spanned 1928-32. The overarching argument for revisiting the terms of the D'Arcy Agreement on the Iranian side was that its national wealth was being squandered by a concession that was granted in 1901 by a previous non-constitutional government forced to agree to inequitable terms under duress. In order to buttress his position in talks with the British, Teymourtash retained the expertise of French and Swiss oil experts.
Iran demanded a revision of the terms whereby Iran would be granted 25% of APOC's total shares. To counter British objections, Teymourtash would state that "if this had been a new concession, the Persian Government would have insisted not on 25 percent but on a 50-50 basis. Teymourtash also asked for a minimum guaranteed interest of 12.5% on dividends from the shares of the company, plus 2s per ton of oil produced. In addition, he specified that the company was to reduce the existing area of the concession. The intent behind reducing the area of the concession was to push APOC operations to the southwest of the country so as to make it possible for Iran to approach and lure non-British oil companies to develop oilfields on more generous terms in areas not part of APOC's area of concession.
Apart from demanding a more equitable share of the profits of the Company, an issue that did not escape Teymourtash's attention was that that the flow of transactions between APOC and its various subsidiaries deprived Iran of gaining an accurate and reliable appreciation of APOC's full profits. As such, he demanded that the company register itself in Tehran as well as London, and the exclusive rights of transportation of the oil be cancelled. In fact in the midst of the negotiations in 1930, the Iranian Majles approved a bill whereby APOC was required to pay a 4 percent tax on its prospective profits earned in Iran.
In the face of British prevarication, Iran decided to demonstrate Iranian misgivings by upping the ante. Apart from encouraging the press to draft editorials criticizing the terms of the D'Arcy concession, a delegation consisting of Reza Shah and other political notables and journalists was dispatched to the vicinity of the oilfields to inaugurate a newly constructed road, with instructions that they refrain from visiting the oil installation in an explicit show of protest.
In 1931, Teymourtash who was travelling to Europe to enroll Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi at a Swiss boarding school, decided to use the occasion to attempt to conclude the negotiations. The following passage, from Cadman, confirms Teymourtash worked feverishly and diligently to resolve all outstanding issues, and succeeded in securing an agreement in principle:
He came to London, he wined and he dined and he spent day and night in negotiating. Many interviews took place. He married his daughter, he put his boy to school [Harrow], he met the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a change took place in our government, and in the midst of all this maze of activities we reached a tentative agreement on the principles to be included in the new document, leaving certain figures and the lump sum to be settled at a later date.
However, while Teymourtash likely believed that after four years of exhaustive and detailed discussions, he had succeeded in navigating the negotiations on the road to a conclusive end; the latest negotiations in London were to prove nothing more than a cul de sac.
Matters came to a head in 1931, when the combined effects of overabundant oil supplies on the global markets and the economic destabilization of the Depression, led to fluctuations which drastically reduced annual payments accruing to Iran to a fifth of what it had received in the previous year. In that year APOC informed the Iranian government that its royalties for the year would amount to a mere £366,782 while in the same period the company's income taxes paid to the British Government amounted to approximately £1,000,000. Furthermore, while the company's profits declined 36 percent for the year, the revenues paid to the Iranian government pursuant to the company's accounting practices, decreased by 76 percent. Such a precipitous drop in royalties appeared to confirm suspicions of bad faith, and Teymourtash indicated that the parties would have to revisit negotiations.
However, Reza Shah was soon to assert his authority by dramatically inserting himself into the negotiations. The Monarch attended a meeting of the Council of Ministers in November 1932, and after publicly rebuking Teymourtash for his failure to secure an agreement, dictated a letter to cabinet cancelling the D'Arcy Agreement. The Iranian Government notified APOC that it would cease further negotiations and demanded cancellation of the D'Arcy concession. Rejecting the cancellation, the British government espoused the claim on behalf of APOC and brought the dispute before the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague, asserting that it regarded itself "as entitled to take all such measures as the situation may demand for the Company's protection." At this point, Hassan Taqizadeh, the new Iranian Minister entrusted with the task of assuming responsibility for the oil dossier, was to intimate to the British the cancellation was simply meant to expedite negotiations and that it would constitute political suicide for Iran to withdraw from negotiations.
After the dispute between the two countries was taken up at the Hague, the Czech Foreign Minister who was appointed mediator put the matter into abeyance to allow the contending parties to attempt to resolve the dispute. Ironically, Reza Shah who had stood firm in demanding the abolishment of the D'Arcy concession, suddenly acquiesced to British demands, much to the chagrin and disappointment of his Cabinet. A new agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was agreed to after Cadman visited Iran in April 1933 and was granted a private audience with the Shah. A new agreement was ratified by Majles on May 28, 1933 and received Royal assent the following day.
[edit] 1933 agreement
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The terms of the new agreement provided for a new 60-year concession. The Agreement reduced the area under APOC control to 100,000 square miles, required annual payments in lieu of Iranian income tax, as well as guaranteeing a minimum annual payment of £750,000 to the Iranian government. These provisions, while appearing favourable, are widely agreed to have represented a squandered opportunity for the Iranian government. The agreement extended the life of the D'Arcy concession by an additional 32 years, negligently allowed APOC to select the best 100,000 square miles, the minimum guaranteed royalty was far too modest, and in a fit of carelessness the company's operations were exempted from import or customs duties. Finally, Iran surrendered its right to annul the agreement, and settled on a complex and tediously elaborate arbitration process to settle any disagreements that would arise.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company continued its large Persian operations although it changed its name to the AIOC in 1935. By 1950 Abadan had become the world's largest refinery. In spite of diversification the AIOC still relied heavily on its Iranian oil fields for three-quarters of its supplies, and controlled all oil in Iran.
[edit] Nationalization and coup
[edit] Iranian unhappiness
By 1951 Iranian support for nationalization of the AIOC was intense. Grievances included the small fraction of revenues Iran received. In 1947, for example, AIOC reported after-tax profits of £40 million ($112 million) - and gave Iran just £7 million.[6]
Conditions for Iranian oil workers and their families were very bad. The director of Iran's Petroleum Institute wrote that
Wages were 50 cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick leave, no disability compensation. The workers lived in a shanty town called Kaghazabad, or Paper City, without running water or electricity, ... In winter the earth flooded and became a flat, perspiring lake. The mud in town was knee-deep, and ... when the rains subsided, clouds of nipping, small-winged flies rose from the stagnant water to fill the nostrils .... Summer was worse. ... The heat was torrid ... sticky and unrelenting - while the wind and sandstorms shipped off the desert hot as a blower. The dwellings of Kaghazabad, cobbled from rusted oil drums hammered flat, turned into sweltering ovens. ... In every crevice hung the foul, sulfurous stench of burning oil .... in Kaghazad there was nothing - not a tea shop, not a bath, not a single tree. The tiled reflecting pool and shaded central square that were part of every Iranian town, ... were missing here. The unpaved alleyways were emporiums for rats.[7]
Under the 1933 agreement with Reza Shah, AIOC had promised to give laborers better pay and more chance for advancement, build schools, hospitals, roads and telephone system. It had not done so.[6]
In May 1949 Britain had offered a "Supplemental oil agreement" which guaranteed royalty payments would not drop below £4 million, reduced the area in which it would be allowed to drill, and promised more Iranians would be trained for administrative positions." But gave Iran no "greater voice in company's management" or right to audit the company books. When the Iranian Prime Minister tried to dicker with AIOC head Sir William Fraser. Fraser "dismissed him" and flew back to UK.[8]
In late December 1950 word reached Tehran that the American-owned Arabian American Oil Company had agreed to share profits with Saudis on a 50-50 basis. The UK Foreign Office rejected the idea of any similar agreement for AIOC.[9]
By now expressions of Iranian anger against lack of support for nationalization included a distinct lack of mourning following the assassination of anti-nationalization prime minister Haj Ali Razmara,[10] and a raucous walkout of protest by newspaper reporters when a visiting American diplomat urged 'reason as well as enthusiasm' to deal with the British embargo of Iran.[11]
[edit] Nationalization
In March 1951, the Iranian parliament (the Majlis) voted to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and its holdings, and shortly thereafter elected a widely respected statesman and champion of nationalization, Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister.[12] This led to the Abadan Crisis where foreign countries refused to take Iranian oil and the Abadan refinery was closed. AIOC withdrew from Iran and increased output of its other reserves in the Persian Gulf.
Mossadeq broke off negotiations with AIOC in July 1951 when the AIOC threatened to pull its employees out of Iran and warned tanker owners that "the receipts from the Iranian government would not be accepted on the world market."[13] The British ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian government and explored the possibility of an invasion to occupy the oil area. US President Harry S. Truman and US ambassador to Iran Henry F. Grady opposed intervention in Iran but needed Britain's support for the Korean War. Efforts by the U.S. through the International Court of Justice were made to settle the dispute, but a 50/50 profit-sharing arrangement, with recognition of nationalization, was rejected by both the British government and Prime Minister Mossadegh.
As the months went on, the crisis became acute. By mid-1952 an attempt by the Shah to replace Mossadegh had backfired into riots nationwide; Mossadegh returned with even greater power. At the same time his coalition was "fraying," as Britain’s boycott of Iran eliminated a major source of government revenue and made Iranians "poorer and unhappier by the day."[14]
[edit] Coup
Main article: 1953 Iranian coup d'état
By 1953 both the US and the UK both had new, more anti-communist and more interventionist administrations. The United States no longer opposed intervention in Iran. Britain was unable to subvert Mossadegh as its embassy and officials had been evicted from Iran in October 1952, but successfully appealed in the U.S. to anti-communist sentiments, depicting both Mossadegh and Iran as unstable and likely to fall to communism in their weakened state. If Iran fell, the "enormous assets" of "Iranian oil production and reserves" would fall into Communist control, as would "in short order the other areas of the Middle East".[15] In August the American CIA with the help of bribes to politicians, soldiers, mobs, and newspapers, and contacts/information from the British embassy and secret service, organized a coup. The shah issued an edict removing Mosaddeq from power and General Fazlollah Zahedi, lead tanks to Mosaddeq's residence overthrowing him from office.
[edit] Consortium
With the new pro-Western Prime Minister, Fazlollah Zahedi, Iranian oil began flowing again and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which later changed its name to British Petroleum, tried to return to its old position. However "public opinion was so opposed that the new government could not permit it." Instead an international consortium under the nationalized name (National Iranian Oil Company) was created, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company being just one member and holding 40% of the shares. The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran, "but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors."[16]
[edit] Subsidiary companies
[edit] Scottish Oils Ltd
Scottish Oils Ltd (owned by Anglo-Persian) was a producer of shale oil. It was formed between 1918 and 1920 by the merger of five smaller Scottish oil shale companies: Youngs, Broxburn, Pumpherston, Oakbank and Philpstoun.[17][18][19] Shale oil production in Scotland ceased in the early 1960s but there was an unsuccessful attempt to revive it in 1973.[20] The company still exists[21] but is no longer in the shale oil business.
[edit] Tanker fleet
The British Tanker Company Limited (BTC) was formed in 1915, after the Anglo-Persian Oil Company decided to become a fully self-contained operation, directly owning a fleet of tankers for sea transport. On formation, the BTC had an initial budget of $144,000 with which to build seven steam-powered tankers. The Company’s first tanker was the British Emperor, which was launched in 1916. The names of the first seven ships, and all later additions to the fleet, bore the prefix ‘British’. Over the next decade, the demand for oil grew throughout the developed world, and the BTC expanded accordingly. By 1924, the fleet numbered 60 ships, with the 60th being the flagship, 10,762 deadweight tonnes (dwt), British Aviator. She was the BTC’s first diesel engine oil tanker, and at that time was the most powerful single-screw motor ship in the world.
The economic depression of the early 1930s saw rising unemployment amongst merchant navies around the world. However, the BTC undertook a series of strategic mergers, and coupled with the continued support of the Shah of Iran, the APOC succeeded in strengthening its position within the industry. In 1939, the British government chartered the whole fleet of 93 tankers to supply fuel to its armed forces during the Second World War. The fleet lost a total of 42 ships sunk during the war.
Within a year of peace in 1945, the BTC fleet had returned to its pre-war total of 93 vessels. The recovery continued with the building of 57 new tankers, each 12,000 dwt, which increased the tonnage of oil transported from Abadan refinery in Iran, whilst remaining light enough for the tankers to pass through the shallow waters of the Suez Canal.
In 1951, however, the situation changed dramatically, when the Iranian oil industry was nationalised, and the APOC removed all its staff from Iran.
[edit] See also
* Anglo-Persian Agreement
* Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran
* National Iranian Oil Company
* Abadan Crisis timeline
* 1953 Iranian coup d'état
* Mohammad Mossadegh
* Hossein Fatemi
* Dariush Forouhar
* Operation Ajax
* Abdolhossein Teymourtash
* John Cadman, 1st Baron Cadman
[edit] References
1. ^ Kinzer, Stephen, All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Stephen Kinzer, John Wiley and Sons, 2003, p.48
2. ^ Longhurst, Henry, Adventures in Oil: the story of British Petroleum, London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1959, p.21
3. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), pp.48-9
4. ^ Michael Gasson (Former Group Archivist, BP Archive). "Home: The BP Archive". Business History Links: Business Archives:. Association of Business Historians (abh). http://www.busman.qmul.ac.uk/abh/archive5.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-09.
5. ^ "From Anglo-Persian Oil to BP Amoco" August 11, 1998 BBC
6. ^ a b Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.67
7. ^ (quoted in Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.67. source: Farmanfarmaian, Manucher, Blood and Oil: Inside the Shah's Iran, Modern Library, 1999, p.184-5 (Manucher Farmanfarmaian became director of Iran's petroleum institute in 1949)
8. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.68
9. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.76
10. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men, (2003), p.78-80
11. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men, (2003), p.106
12. ^ Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (1982), pp.55-6
13. ^ Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (1982), p.268
14. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), pp.135-6
15. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), p.158
16. ^ Kinzer, All the Shah's Men (2003), pp.195-6
17. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PduotC73nh0C&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=%22Scottish+Oils+Ltd%22&source=web&ots=aqTFGGPn_b&sig=Enj0GAgWl3geT9h83D8oss_xe9s&hl=en
18. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j_Yty5JG4uIC&pg=PT175&lpg=PT175&dq=%22Scottish+Oils+Ltd%22&source=web&ots=HViM0451zD&sig=BUGtroGLm9dEQ2TY2RrGCJT3i90&hl=en
19. ^ Uphall On The Web - Scottish Oils
20. ^ Shale Oil Industry (Scotland) (Hansard, 4 December 1973)
21. ^ WebCHeck - Select and Access Company Information
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company"
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Anglo-Persian Oil Company
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The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company using the oil reserves of the Middle East. APOC was renamed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954, as one root of the BP Company today.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 The D'Arcy Oil Concession
o 1.1 Exploration and discovery
o 1.2 Creation of APOC
o 1.3 Renegotiating of terms by Iran
o 1.4 1933 agreement
* 2 Nationalization and coup
o 2.1 Iranian unhappiness
o 2.2 Nationalization
o 2.3 Coup
o 2.4 Consortium
* 3 Subsidiary companies
o 3.1 Scottish Oils Ltd
* 4 Tanker fleet
* 5 See also
* 6 References
[edit] The D'Arcy Oil Concession
[edit] Exploration and discovery
In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with the Shah Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000, an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits.[1]
D'Arcy hired George Reynolds to do the prospecting in the Iranian desert. Conditions were extremely harsh: "small pox raged, bandits and warlords ruled, water was all but unavailable, and temperatures often soared past 50°C".[2] After several years of prospecting, D'Arcy's fortune dwindled away and he was forced to sell most of his rights to a Glasgow-based syndicate, the Burmah Oil Company."
By 1908 having sunk more than £500,000 into their Persian venture and found no oil, D'Arcy and Burmah decided to abandon exploration in Iran. In early May 1908 they sent Reynolds a telegram telling him that they had run out of money and ordering him to 'cease work, dismiss the staff, dismantle anything worth the cost of transporting to the coast for re-shipment, and come home.' Reynolds delayed following these orders and in a stroke of luck, struck oil shortly after on May 26, 1908.[3]
[edit] Creation of APOC
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Burmah Oil Company Ltd. created the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) as a subsidiary and also sold shares to the public.[4]
Volume production of Persian oil products eventually started in 1913 from a refinery built at Abadan, for its first 50 years the largest oil refinery in the world (see Abadan Refinery). In 1913, shortly before World War I, APOC managers negotiated with a new customer, the middle-aged Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. At Churchill's suggestion, and in exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in APOC. The British government became de facto hidden power behind the oil company.[5]
APOC took a 50% share in a new Turkish Petroleum Company organized in 1912 by Calouste Gulbenkian to explore and develop oil resources in the Ottoman Empire. After a hiatus caused by World War I it reformed and struck an immense gusher at Kirkuk, Iraq in 1927, renaming itself the Iraq Petroleum Company.
During this period, Iranian popular opposition to the D'Arcy oil concession and royalty terms whereby Iran only received 16 percent of net profits was widespread. Since industrial development and planning, as well as other fundamental reforms were predicated on oil revenues, the government's lack of control over the oil industry served to accentuate the Iranian Government's misgivings regarding the manner in which APOC conducted its affairs in Iran. Such a pervasive atmosphere of dissatisfaction seemed to suggest that a radical revision of the concession terms would be possible. Moreover, owing to the introduction of reforms that improved fiscal order in Iran, APOC's past practice of cutting off advances in oil royalties when its demands were not met had lost much of its sting.
[edit] Renegotiating of terms by Iran
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The attempt to revise the terms of the oil concession on a more favourable basis for Iran led to protracted negotiations that took place in Tehran, Lausanne, London and Paris between Abdolhossein Teymourtash, Iran's Minister of Court 1925-32 and its nominal Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Chairman of APOC, John Cadman, spanned 1928-32. The overarching argument for revisiting the terms of the D'Arcy Agreement on the Iranian side was that its national wealth was being squandered by a concession that was granted in 1901 by a previous non-constitutional government forced to agree to inequitable terms under duress. In order to buttress his position in talks with the British, Teymourtash retained the expertise of French and Swiss oil experts.
Iran demanded a revision of the terms whereby Iran would be granted 25% of APOC's total shares. To counter British objections, Teymourtash would state that "if this had been a new concession, the Persian Government would have insisted not on 25 percent but on a 50-50 basis. Teymourtash also asked for a minimum guaranteed interest of 12.5% on dividends from the shares of the company, plus 2s per ton of oil produced. In addition, he specified that the company was to reduce the existing area of the concession. The intent behind reducing the area of the concession was to push APOC operations to the southwest of the country so as to make it possible for Iran to approach and lure non-British oil companies to develop oilfields on more generous terms in areas not part of APOC's area of concession.
Apart from demanding a more equitable share of the profits of the Company, an issue that did not escape Teymourtash's attention was that that the flow of transactions between APOC and its various subsidiaries deprived Iran of gaining an accurate and reliable appreciation of APOC's full profits. As such, he demanded that the company register itself in Tehran as well as London, and the exclusive rights of transportation of the oil be cancelled. In fact in the midst of the negotiations in 1930, the Iranian Majles approved a bill whereby APOC was required to pay a 4 percent tax on its prospective profits earned in Iran.
In the face of British prevarication, Iran decided to demonstrate Iranian misgivings by upping the ante. Apart from encouraging the press to draft editorials criticizing the terms of the D'Arcy concession, a delegation consisting of Reza Shah and other political notables and journalists was dispatched to the vicinity of the oilfields to inaugurate a newly constructed road, with instructions that they refrain from visiting the oil installation in an explicit show of protest.
In 1931, Teymourtash who was travelling to Europe to enroll Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi at a Swiss boarding school, decided to use the occasion to attempt to conclude the negotiations. The following passage, from Cadman, confirms Teymourtash worked feverishly and diligently to resolve all outstanding issues, and succeeded in securing an agreement in principle:
He came to London, he wined and he dined and he spent day and night in negotiating. Many interviews took place. He married his daughter, he put his boy to school [Harrow], he met the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a change took place in our government, and in the midst of all this maze of activities we reached a tentative agreement on the principles to be included in the new document, leaving certain figures and the lump sum to be settled at a later date.
However, while Teymourtash likely believed that after four years of exhaustive and detailed discussions, he had succeeded in navigating the negotiations on the road to a conclusive end; the latest negotiations in London were to prove nothing more than a cul de sac.
Matters came to a head in 1931, when the combined effects of overabundant oil supplies on the global markets and the economic destabilization of the Depression, led to fluctuations which drastically reduced annual payments accruing to Iran to a fifth of what it had received in the previous year. In that year APOC informed the Iranian government that its royalties for the year would amount to a mere £366,782 while in the same period the company's income taxes paid to the British Government amounted to approximately £1,000,000. Furthermore, while the company's profits declined 36 percent for the year, the revenues paid to the Iranian government pursuant to the company's accounting practices, decreased by 76 percent. Such a precipitous drop in royalties appeared to confirm suspicions of bad faith, and Teymourtash indicated that the parties would have to revisit negotiations.
However, Reza Shah was soon to assert his authority by dramatically inserting himself into the negotiations. The Monarch attended a meeting of the Council of Ministers in November 1932, and after publicly rebuking Teymourtash for his failure to secure an agreement, dictated a letter to cabinet cancelling the D'Arcy Agreement. The Iranian Government notified APOC that it would cease further negotiations and demanded cancellation of the D'Arcy concession. Rejecting the cancellation, the British government espoused the claim on behalf of APOC and brought the dispute before the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague, asserting that it regarded itself "as entitled to take all such measures as the situation may demand for the Company's protection." At this point, Hassan Taqizadeh, the new Iranian Minister entrusted with the task of assuming responsibility for the oil dossier, was to intimate to the British the cancellation was simply meant to expedite negotiations and that it would constitute political suicide for Iran to withdraw from negotiations.
After the dispute between the two countries was taken up at the Hague, the Czech Foreign Minister who was appointed mediator put the matter into abeyance to allow the contending parties to attempt to resolve the dispute. Ironically, Reza Shah who had stood firm in demanding the abolishment of the D'Arcy concession, suddenly acquiesced to British demands, much to the chagrin and disappointment of his Cabinet. A new agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was agreed to after Cadman visited Iran in April 1933 and was granted a private audience with the Shah. A new agreement was ratified by Majles on May 28, 1933 and received Royal assent the following day.
[edit] 1933 agreement
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The terms of the new agreement provided for a new 60-year concession. The Agreement reduced the area under APOC control to 100,000 square miles, required annual payments in lieu of Iranian income tax, as well
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pirates would easily defeat any ninja in their path
Posted November 30, 2009
Jarrod says:
they are usually on the sea in huge numbers i'd like to see a ninja sneak up on them
Posted November 29, 2009
Harridan says:
Harrrrr!
Posted November 28, 2009
Justin says:
Yar!
Posted November 27, 2009
Pirate says:
Pirates are better in every way. Period.
Posted November 24, 2009
pirate7374 says:
pirates because ninjas will try to be all stealthy and pirates can just shoot them in the face with a gun and besides ninjas are for assainiation so they suk head to head
Posted November 18, 2009
海賊 says:
Cannon > Shuriken
Ninjas are overrated by hordes of brainwashed animu kids who think everything they see in cartoons must be true.
Posted November 17, 2009
matniky says:
beacause Monkey.D.LUffy on there side
Posted November 16, 2009
sean says:
Pirates have guns and come in larger numbers. It's a no brainer.
Posted November 15, 2009
CaptainJB says:
I say pirates hands down. Unless they were in port that is. Ninja rely on stealth for their success and at sea there's absolutely no way to sneak up on someone. Also, if the ninja manged to board the ship without the pirate crew's knowledge there is no way enough ninja could find places to hide on that ship. They would need to strike all at once to ensure victory. As far as the argument that Shurikens were more deadly than a pirates pistols: completely idiotic. A ninja with shurikens is almost certainly more accurate but shurikens were never intended for killing blows, but rather to temporarily cripple an adversary. Usually for escape purposes when ninja failed to kill every opponent. Also, misfires and innacuracy are a big problem unless, like most, the pirate carried from 4-6 pistols at any given time in battle. Also, the blunderbuss(basically an early shotgun) was very effective at hitting people and rarely misfired. Also when considering guns, we have to realize that pirates are still in existence today using weapons that are sophisticated accurate and deadly. A ninja (if one even existed today) would be using the same techniques and weapons developed over a millennium ago while the modern pirate might have an AK-47 or an AR-15 combat rifle and some form of also deadly accurate sidearm. And possibly kevlar which would render kunai and shurikens almost entirely useless anyway. Point made.
Posted November 08, 2009
shannon says:
pirates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! cuz they got more wepons
Posted October 04, 2009
893kira says:
Say what a ninja can catch a bullet are you a freaking retard?
Even there ninja technology made by Hollywood are not true.
Don't with Hollywood movies and anime have a life man!
The only technology they have are swords and some lethal arsenals.
Even in Mythbuster in Discovery channel shown and even a real life ninja admit they cannot catch bullets and arrow.
Pirates rocks because of there lethal technology guns and even in history there are still the terror of the seas and even today lol
Posted September 26, 2009
893kira says:
what a ninja can catch a bullet are you freaking retard?
no one can do that lol even in MythBuster in Discovery Channel show and even a real ninja studying ninjutsu admit they cannot do that.
Have a life man
Pirates have big freaking gun and in history they are the terror of the sea.
Posted September 26, 2009
ninjas are as real as santa claus says:
pirates because their arguments are a lot more convincing than a ninja being able to 'catch a bullet with their teeth'
Posted September 26, 2009
wimploe55 says:
ok, i'm really tiered of the whole ninjas are this, ninjas are that bull... The only reason their like that is because they've been romantisized and made out to be more then what they really are. They didn't master any form of martial arts or sword fighting, because they didn't have the means to. Ninja's were beings who were hired to gain information or assassinate someone, which would involve them listening in on conversations, or poisoning... Because if they ever went head on against a samurai, they were always screwed, because the samurai had training, and weapons, and numbers, they were known to be able to take out just about any ninja that crossed their path, and did it without mercy. Now, pirates are almost exactly the way they have been depicted. They were people who would sail around the sea, preying on merchant ships and killing or imprisoning people. Some were able to even take the Navy head on, like Edward Teach. He was able to obtain ships from the navy and made other pirates afraid of him just by how powerful he was. But ya, pirates only drank rum because water would go bad, but rum would also dull pain, thus allowing them to take more damage and still fight. Now, let's go supernatural, ninjas have their so called magic, but pirates have curses. These curses vary from immortality to being able to conjure storms by your rage. They also had magical weapons and artifacts as well.
Posted September 20, 2009
Pirateer says:
Pirates would win, due to the fact that ninjas are practically extinct.
Posted September 15, 2009
Ninjas win!
danielle xoxo says:
ninja (:
Posted December 21, 2009
Kati says:
Ninjas would totally win.
Posted December 21, 2009
Cody says:
Ninja
Posted December 16, 2009
James says:
eorge Martin Lees Military Cross DFC FRS (1898–1955) was a British geologist and soldier. Born in Dundalk to a Scottish civil engineer, Lees was educated at St. Andrew's College and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, gaining a commission in the Royal Artillery and from there transferring to the Royal Flying Corps, where he served in Egypt and Mesopotamia and won both the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom). After the end of the war, Lees served as a political advisor in Southern Kurdistan, before returning to England and resigning in 1921.
Lees then studied at the Royal School of Mines and, despite having no formal qualifications, was made an Assistant Geologist with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1930 he was made Chief Geologist, and under his supervision the company discovered many oilfields and surveyed over 100,000 square miles of land. He received the Bigsby Medal in 1943, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948; in 1954 he received the Sidney Powers Memorial Medal, the highest American geology award. After retiring in 1953, he died on 5 January 1955.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Early life and military service
* 2 Geological work
* 3 References
* 4 Bibliography
[edit] Early life and military service
Lees was born on 16 April 1898 at Dundalk to George Murray Lees, a Scottish civil engineer, and his wife Mary Martin. From 1906 he was educated at St. Andrew's College before moving to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1915 to train for the First World War. He gained a commission in the Royal Artillery, serving in France, and from there transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, where he won the Military Cross. He spent some time in Egypt and Mesopotamia (now Iraq), winning the Distinguished Flying Cross, and after being shot down behind Turkish lines at Kirkuk managed to make his way back to British forces on foot. After the end of the war Lees served as an Assistant Political Officer in Southern Kurdistan, which had been established as a buffer state between Persians and Arabs under British control to prevent future wars. Lees acted as an advisor to the local ruler, who betrayed the British and attempted to set up his own kingdom; Lees was beseiged in his house by hundreds of armed men, and only escaped through trickery.[1]
[edit] Geological work
Lees returned to England in 1921, and handed in his resignation. Following studies at the Royal School of Mines, he joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as an Assistant Geologist, despite having no formal qualifications,[2] and returned to the middle east in 1922. In 1924 he and the geologist Hugo De Böckh toured south-west Persia, identifying several productive oil fields; the pair later published the theoretical side of their work in the paper The Structure of Asia, edited by J. W. Gregory and presented to the British Association in 1928.[3] From 1925 to 1926 he surveyed Oman with K. Washington Gray, the resulting papers (given to the Geological Society of London and the Royal Geographical Society) remained standard works for the region until at least the 1950s.[4]
From 1928 to 1930, Lees examined the company organisation and oil prospects in Germany, Canada, Egypt and the United States, as well as surveying fields in Kermanshah and Iraqi Kurdistan. On 1 November 1930, at the age of 32, Lees was appointed Chief Geologist of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. During his 22-year tenure the company discovered most of the modern Iraqi oil fields and surveyed more than 100,000 square miles of land. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Lees helped survey British territory for oil reserves, finding significant reserves in Nottinghamshire and also helping to discover coal fields. For his exploration work in Britain and the middle east, he was awarded the Bigsby Medal in 1943, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948.[5] From 1951 to 1952 he served as President of the Geological Society of London, the first geologist who had practised in the industry to do so. He retired in 1953, and after receiving the Sidney Powers Memorial Medal in 1954, the highest American geological medal, died on 25 January 1955.[6]
[edit] References
1. ^ Arkell (1955) p.163
2. ^ Falcon, N.L. (2004). "Oxford DNB article: Lees, George Martin (subscription needed)". Oxford University Press. http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/34473. Retrieved 10 December 2009. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34473
3. ^ Arkell (1955) p.164
4. ^ Arkell (1955) p.165
5. ^ Arkell (1955) p.166
6. ^ Arkell (1955) p.169
[edit] Bibliography
* Arkell, W.J. (1955). "Colin Eaborn". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (The Royal Society) 1. ISSN 0080-4606. JSTOR 769249
[hide]
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Presidents of the Geological Society of London
19th Century
George Bellas Greenough · Henry Grey Bennet · William Blake · John MacCulloch · George Bellas Greenough · Spencer Compton · William Babington · William Buckland · John Bostock · William Fitton · Adam Sedgwick · Roderick Murchison · George Bellas Greenough · Charles Lyell · William Whewell · William Buckland · Roderick Murchison · Henry Warburton · Leonard Horner · Henry De la Beche · Charles Lyell · William Hopkins · Edward Forbes · William Hamilton · Daniel Sharpe · Joseph Ellison Portlock · John Phillips · Leonard Horner · Andrew Crombie Ramsay · William Hamilton · Warington Wilkinson Smyth · Thomas Henry Huxley · Joseph Prestwich · George Douglas Campbell · John Evans · Peter Martin Duncan · Henry Clifton Sorby · Robert Etheridge · John Whitaker Hulke · Thomas Bonney · John Wesley Judd · William Blanford · Archibald Geikie · Wilfred Hudleston · Henry Woodward · Henry Hicks · William Whitaker
20th Century
Jethro Teall · Charles Lapworth · John Marr · Archibald Geikie · William Sollas · William Watts · Aubrey Strahan · Arthur Smith Woodward · Alfred Harker · George Lamplugh · Richard Oldham · Albert Seward · John Evans · Francis Bather · John Gregory · Edmund Garwood · Thomas Holland · John Green · Owen Thomas Jones · Henry Hurd Swinnerton · Percy Boswell · Herbert Leader Hawkins · William Fearnsides · Arthur Trueman · Herbert Harold Read · Cecil Tilley · Owen Thomas Jones · George Lees · William King · Walter Campbell Smith · Leonard Hawkes · James Stubblefield · Sydney Hollingworth · Oliver Bulman · Frederick Shotton · Kingsley Dunham · Thomas Neville George · William Alexander Deer · Thomas Westoll · Percy Kent · Wallace Pitcher · Percival Allen · Howel Francis · Janet Watson · Charles Holland · Bernard Leake · Derek Blundell · Anthony Harris · Charles Curtis · (Robert) Stephen Sparks · Richard Hardman · Robin Cocks
Posted December 15, 2009
Seri says:
Ninjas will probably win.^-^
Posted December 08, 2009
fusionman says:
Fear the ninjas!
Posted December 07, 2009
vanessa says:
ninjas are invisible, so therefore, a pirate would not be able to see them coming let alone kill them
Posted December 06, 2009
I <3 Intercourse says:
The ninja could kill the pirate before the pirate even knows what's coming.
Posted December 06, 2009
Sparkle Bug says:
Have you ever been snuck up on by someone?Ever been caught doing something you shouldn't be doing? Heard of global warming? NINJAS WOULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS!
Posted December 06, 2009
B. the strange says:
Because of their stealth.
Posted December 06, 2009
Borre says:
Ninjas win
Posted December 04, 2009
caleb says:
um a ninja can WIN
Posted December 03, 2009
chakra.mc says:
Screw guns, you can't shoot what you can't see. Ninja's FTW!
Posted November 24, 2009
HendrixVanWasser says:
Ninjas! OF COURSE!
Pirates would be to busy trying to hop around with their shitty wood leg and ninjas would totally kick their asses... obviously!!!!
Posted November 21, 2009
aimee says:
i think ninjas would win cuz theyre invincible!
Posted November 19, 2009
Ninja'srule says:
Pirates spend months at a time stuck in 50 square feet with a bunch of other sweaty guys. can you say HOMO
Posted November 12, 2009
Brett says:
pirates are dumb Ninjas are smart and slick
Posted November 11, 2009
panzerf says:
Ninjas. Are. Behind. You.
Posted November 08, 2009
nolan says:
ninjas have sherikins to kill the pirate and pirate hand guns were very inaccurate
Posted November 01, 2009
MRx0oooxx says:
Ninjas they are superior in every way, also they can not tell you they are ninjas pirates are obviously pirates. You would not know a ninja until he stabbed you in the back.
Posted October 28, 2009
Princess Consuela Banana Hammock says:
NINJAS, ftw.
We kick pirate butt. :'D
Stealth, technique, skills...the pirates don't stand a chance with their eye patches and wooden legs.
Posted October 21, 2009
Anna says:
NINJAS, ftw.
We kick pirate ass. :'D
Stealth, skills, technique...the pirates don't stand a chance with their eye pathches and wooden legs.
Posted October 21, 2009
NiNjA r beastly says:
pshh...f'course NINJAS!! oo gunnss scarryyy...mann they can freakin just hide in the ship...blow it up..and since pirates are drunk 99.9% of the time a ninja can just wipe them in 5 min..max. 4 U ALL U PPL WHO SAY NINJAS AIN'T REAL..WELL GUESS WUT! THERE'S A NINJA SCHOOL IN THE U.S!! SO GET U FACT STRAIGHT K? o woooww so priates been here longer that can mean that they can die faster 2...n seriouslyy...w/o guns/canons n wut not..pirates r just gonna b screwd over...with or w/o wepons..ninjas can dominate either wayy..n u kno like 50% of the resons y u guys say that priates r cool is because of their look and all the money they get...well news flash guys..THEY'RE IDIOTS!!! & GREEDY! they wud risk their lives..for wut..money?!?! geezz..im donnee wit this...all im sayin is...if it werent 4 the pirates' "looks" & money, ninjas would have won by 10000000000000000x more than pirates
Posted October 16, 2009
Kairu Suki says:
yes, pirates have guns. but those guns only have one shot. and the guns lose accuracy after just 10 feet. after that all you have is a small club. and even if you do get shot you still have a good chance of living. ninjas used blow darts laced with blowfish poison that had accuracy for over 20 feet. one hit anywhere from that and your dead in no time. I would rather be shot by a pirates gun than shot by a ninjas poison dart.
Posted October 09, 2009
RoRo says:
NINJAS!!!!<3
Posted October 06, 2009
Brian says:
All it would take is for a lone ninja to use his powers of stealth to sneak aboard a pirate ship after they all got drunk and passed out. The ninja could rob them blind or kill them all, or better yet, both!
Posted September 26, 2009
Planetlivechat says:
A ninja is trained to kill and pirates rape and pillage so the ninja would win.
Posted September 23, 2009
sam3erry says:
ninjas, jet lee could take off jack sparrows head before he realises he's dead, although jack is the best pirate ;) "why's the rum always gone" =)
Posted September 10, 2009
JustinFTW says:
Think about this, Ninjas are like predators and pirates like Aliens. Who always wins? Predators, for the same reason that Ninjas win, they are professional assassins who take their job seriously and will kill at no matter the cost. Pirates are just alcoholic thugs in colorful clothing.
Posted September 08, 2009
Ninja Facts
Everything known about ninjas.
- Wear cool black clothes all the time, in which they can hide an infinite number of shurikens, knives and other weapons.
- Train in secret monasteries since the age of 4.
- Ninja abilities include: appearing anywhere instantly, catching bullets with their hands, and kicking your ass when they're 100 meters away.
- Fight using shurikens, daggers, and their bare hands. There are 312 things in an average room they can kill you with... Including the room itself.
- Are so stealthy they can live in your house for days without anyone noticing.
- Follow the code and kill themselves dramatically if they fail.
- Meditate and contemplate their existence. Ninjas don't care about material things like wealth.
- If you see a ninja either he is not a real one or he wanted you to see him before he kills you.
- If you like ninjas, check out this awesome Ninja T-shirt from SplitReason.
How to Become a Ninja
Ask a Ninja Presents The Ninja Handbook: This Book Looks Forward to Killing You Soon
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 01/02/2010)
After much debate and in a spirit of morbid amusement, the International Order of Ninjas has chosen to produce The Ninja Handbook, the first-ever secret ninja training guide specifically designed for the non-ninja. Most people who handle these delicate, deadly pages will die (probably in an elaborately horrific and painful manner). But whether your journey lasts five seconds or five days or (rather inconceivably) five years, all those who bravely take up this text and follow the tenets and trials laid out within will die knowing they were as ninja as they possibly could have been.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Pirate Facts
Scientific facts about pirates.
- Pirates drink rum or grog all day. These must be consumed either straight from the barrel, or a goblet large enough to be used as a weapon.
- Are obnoxious and smelly. Hygiene is not a priority for a pirate; use of soap is uncommon. Spilling rum all over oneself is a perfect replacement for a shower.
- A real pirate must wear either a bandana, a three-cornered hat, or an eye-patch. They might use a hook or a peg leg when needed, but these are usually reserved for captains.
- Pirates possess big ships equipped with canons and flags of skull and bones. Make the traitors walk the plank.
- Fight using pistols, rifles and swords. Yelling insults during a fight is mandatory.
- Are only interested in loot and booty (both kinds). Refer to all women as "wenches".
- None of them are rich since even if they find treasure, they loose it all in one day by gambling.
- The decline in number of pirates is believed to have caused the global warming (see the church of Flying Spaghetti Monster).
- The dictionary of a pirate usually includes "Arrrr!", "Avast!", and "Ahoy!". "Arrrr", for one, is a perfect answer to any question.
- If you like pirates, check out this catchy Pirates PWN T-shirt from SplitReason!
How to Become a Pirate
The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers & Rogues
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 01/02/2010)
"The Pirate Primer" by George Choundas is the first and only book on the pirate language, containing every distinctive term, phrase, usage, and speech structure uttered by or attributed to pirates in film, television, literature, and historical accounts over the last three centuries. It will help you learn how to speak like a pirate and impress your friends with your vast knowledge of pirate slang.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Danger, Mr. Pirate, danger!
Interesting Pirates vs Ninjas links
These will help you understand how important PvN is!
1
Pirates versus Ninjas - Wikipedia
Wikipedia takes a scientific (and somewhat boring) approach on the PvN debate.2 points
2
Wellington Grey - Pirates vs Ninjas
A hilarious slideshow explaining everything there is to know about pirates, ninjas, and their battle. Highly recommended!1 point
3
Clumsy Pirate Cafepress Shop
Pirates are too clumsy to be a ninja!1 point
4
Ultimate Ninjas vs Pirates
Funny facts about Ninjas and Pirates.0 points
Comments
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Reply
- lasertek lasertek Dec 1, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
- Love the debate! People came up with so many unique ideas to defend their side.
5* for this lens! Hope you could visit my lenses as well. Thanks
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Reply
- Planetlivechat Planetlivechat Sep 23, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
- As you can see in the picture above the pirates lazy butt is about to get taken out. lol
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Reply
- sam3erry sam3erry Sep 10, 2009 @ 6:52 am
- cool lens ;)
nice! 5*
cheers
sam
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- Fatih Fatih Aug 23, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
- Great pic of the Ninja.........lol....thankx I had a great time....high fives
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Reply
- WebSpinstress WebSpinstress Jul 7, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
- Fantastic lens and a fun debate topic...I love how you included all the pirate and ninja facts. Very creative! :-)
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Reply
- italianheart92 italianheart92 Jun 20, 2009 @ 8:27 pm
- Cool lens very original :D
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- Treasures-By-Brenda Treasures-By-Brenda Apr 8, 2009 @ 7:57 am
- Another nicely done debate lens; another blessing from a brand-new angel.
Brenda
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Reply
- LauraFincannon LauraFincannon Apr 8, 2009 @ 6:01 am
- Fun lens! Last Halloween we had a Pirates vs Ninjas showdown. We ran out of Ninjas to take down. Yarrr!. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDd1fJves5Q&feature=related
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Reply
- kiwisoutback kiwisoutback Mar 13, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
- Great idea for a debate. I like the Polaroid pic, too!
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- Tennis-Storehouse Tennis-Storehouse Mar 12, 2009 @ 7:54 am
- Love that 'Danger, Mr. Pirate, danger' photo!!
:D
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