OIL FOR THE 20th CENTURY

foreign [Music] this is a story of our time in some ways the story of our time entombed beneath the Pavements of a city's Street you'll find them the invoices documents and files dead statements yet they record the wondrous progress of our age that's how the whole thing started with a few letters and an agreement made by a man called Darcy the year 1901. foreign agreement to search for obtain render suitable for trade carry away and sell petroleum [Music] full extent of the Persian Empire except the five Northern provinces just about then Darcy granted me a concession which was the privilege of going out there you'll like it he said it's different well Persia was different but our objectively not in the cities but Way Beyond opened Hills [Music] the Persians have a phrase The Sting of the Sun and in all our troubles we had reason to believe it but a man to cross that country unhampered was bad enough what we faced was near murder Russian Empire was an awfully big place even without those five Northern provinces The Man In Charge was G.B Reynolds sensitive in some people's eyes a difficult man back at head office they didn't know which they disliked most Reynolds periods of Silence which were frequent or his reports when they came reports like these thousands of grasshoppers have chosen the stream as a graveyard one of the Chiefs is as full of intrigue as a nightingale's egg is pregnant with music will head office please arrange to send out mcconnelly's mother we knew there was oil in Persia because the old surface seepages showed it but could we strike it in commercial quantities Reynolds had a hunch for the South the geologists recommended the North and in 1902 the first exploitation company was putting up its first Derricks 300 miles Northwest of the Persian Gulf the noise and bustle of newborn Enterprise shattered The Silence of the Persian Hills [Music] down to the Timeless Sands through the rock that cut their primitive drills to pieces metal dust bad water dysentery and plain homesickness simple tools and simple Tariq out of such Beginnings comes progress six long years went by and we were still at it we tried here we tried there 'd be a spot in the north but the oil had dried up it was called The Syndicate now not the exploitation company but it was the same desert now we were working in the South within sight of where Reynolds had first said but the cash and the patients back in London were running out it was to be here or nowhere and then I am directed by secretaries Redwood gray to inform you that he has received a telegram from his Majesty's charged Affair in Tehran reporting that the operators of your Syndicate have struck oil at 1 200 feet yes we'd struck oil but striking oil was one thing finding a market for it was another but we had one big potential customer for some time the British Navy had been slowly turning away from coal in the view of the head of the admiralty a man called Winston Churchill any real Naval Supremacy must be based on Oil Well we'd got the oil so we got our customer no the only thing was to deliver [Music] hacking and Blasting hundreds of miles of roads out of the Hard Rock of the Hills bringing up every tool and every screw by mule and wagon through the rivers and along the rough tracks where there were any tracks and where there weren't we had to carry the stuff as best we could delivering meant Pipelines miles of them laid over the hills and across the desert Plains foreign was often crewed in the extreme and yet considering all things wonderfully effective the rest was toil sweat and face in the job it had taken us no less than 12 years since Darcy's agreement to get the first oil away and little did we know it it had all been a Race Against Time at first the wheels of War moved slowly in well-worn ruts but gradually War called for all we had men women and machines [Music] now for the first time the petrol engine drove into battle to revolutionize War and to revolutionize itself in the process and by now oil was coming steadily from Persia down from tenby pumping station Down The Long pipelines over the hills and across the desert to abadan abadan just a few chimneys and boilers on the Sandy Shores of the chateilarab river there in crude Stills we were refining a bit Hit or Miss by modern standards refining all the slaves [Applause] off the jetty we had our first specially built tankers loading for the long trip to Europe and the battlefronts meanwhile in the struggle to keep abreast we were expanding building improving for hours was the stuff that in the end did much to bring us victory and when it was over we knew the world could never be quite the same we turned our caps back to front fixed our eyes on the road ahead for we were determined to be different if it killed us [Music] maybe some of our ideas were a little large but behind the sometimes Airy Notions one could feel a sense of progress a solid as the tires on a London bus slowly oil was seeping into our lives laid off like any other modern convenience Spirit of the twenties didn't pass Us by an abaddai neither we were quite a community now with social amenities we even had a police station if you can call that a social amenity and to be quite up to date we had a cinema schools except for The Pianist I we had a little fun regattas on The Pump House Pond and kidding ourselves it was Henley most of all I remember the bustling energy of it all sense of pioneering expansion of sheer Endeavor that prevailed [Music] the mood of the oilmen reflected the mood of the world and New Horizons awaited both by now the ships whose very shape Proclaim their business was sailing the seas in greater numbers to France Belgium Norway Germany and all Europe to Australia India New Zealand the Far East bankery installations were set up in major ports all around the world for the ships now turning fast to oil expansion in places far away from push refineries in France and in Britain the first big oil refinery in South Wales and wherever oil went once again there was pioneering distribution marketing once again Enterprise settled established ever growing for this wondrous stuff called oil is always a driving force not only of machines but of ideas in the minds of men first the pioneers taking the risks making it safe for others to follow then adaptation consolidation oil in the world were going forward together [Music] it's remarkable looking back how closely our history did reflect the general history about time take the year 1933. that was a milestone for us all it certainly was for us that year a new agreement was drawn up with the passion government revising the terms of the old Darcy agreement Darcy who died in 1917. I wonder whether he realized what it started thank you [Music] by now we knew where Reynolds had only been guessing we knew for instance that there were some pretty terrifying forces loose down there if we hadn't been lucky in Reynolds day we'd have blown ourselves to pieces now we had the tools the know-how and the equipment in a really big way and the place was beginning to look like it yes by no there were a few more boilers and chimneys on the shores of that Middle Eastern river abadan the greatest oil refinery in the world by 1933 an Enterprise producing over 7 million tons of oil a year and now in those uneasy years before the war there was more venturing forth seeking fresh fields and pastures new sending Echoes down through the Virgin Rock and by the answer that we got plotting pinpointing deciding choosing from vast areas 100 000 square miles for that was the Zone laid down in the new agreement and by 1938 we'd done the choosing and our choice was sound new and fruitful Fields were opened up and soon we were laying miles of pipeline to cope with this steady increase in production to carry away the oil from the new fields at half kale agajari and Lali yes by 1938 from all our Enterprises 10 million tons of oil were flowing through each year to abadan [Music] there too the plant was growing expanding building not only to deal with the flow of oil but to put into practice new ideas and new conceptions finding out ways of making the most of this stuff called oil ways that were to prove vital when once again it came and this time when it came the wheels of War had lived forever their time-worn ruts War like oil was fluid mobile reflecting the tempo and the habits of the modern world and when deaths struck machines like dying soldiers lay help us as their lifeblood drained away into the sand [Music] the tide of War reached Persia and there was action even death to write up on the record to an enemy thirsting for oil The Fabulous towers of abadan glittered truly like those of an Eastern fable towards them he reached out avidly but like any Eastern mirrors they were to remain forever unobtainable towards the close of 1941 British troops marched in for two years a vital oil supply had been half strangled by the tentacles of War now safeguarded this Mighty plant was free to harness its vast resources to the Urgent cars at hand to become the very posts and strength of the Middle East Allied War Machine drawn forth from the desert oil from aberdan powered lotties and tanks in a desert far away helped once more to make another desert of arrogance and pride now humbled in the dust [Music] now a new chapter began both for the world and in a special sense for us in 1946 The Great Kuwait oil field came into production in Iraq too the pumps roared again Shifting the oil from the kirkuk fields to the Mediterranean we were busy all over the world the cars were on the roads in increasing numbers and we were in the petrol business again the war was over and we had to readjust ourselves think afresh for the world and its demands for oil had changed once more The Familiar Road tankers were seen bearing their welcome load across the Frontiers So lately closed oil was coming from Fields both old and new with a market waiting avidly but to bring the two together we needed ships tankers an intensified program was now planned and carried out 40 ships had been lost in war and in the few years that were to follow British shipyards rang with the noise entailed in making good that loss new ships in 1946 10 in 1948 15 in 1950 including super tankers [Applause] laughs [Music] and then with losses made good well we should have known by now that the oil business can never be plain sailing [Music] I at one blow we lost our greatest source of supply and the largest oil refinery in the world [Music] we're back there now with compensation and a 40 share in the Persian operations but we were not to know that then regardless of the reasons and the Rights and Wrongs one thing was clear oil is always a Target caught up in the subjecting nationalism of the countries where so often it is found truly indeed oil is the story of our time idle to deny that for any company however large this leave-taking was a shaking climax to 50 years endeavor idle to deny too that those 50 years had wrought much change in Persia schools hospitals and the like indeed it was our first medical officer Dr Young Who had become the best known and best-loved Englishman in Persia all those years ago and in the intervening years generations of British people had devoted their lives to Bringing benefits to millions they would never know in Persia and Beyond for them as for those early pioneers abadan and Persia generally had become a way of life albeit a little softened that now it seemed was ended [Music] please arrange to send out the Drillers are working in ships without pull and the suspense for those of us who know the truthful that the operators of your Syndicate have stuck iron at 1 200 feet [Music] um well there it was goodbye or so it seemed to abadan and the achievement of 50 years as a company we had no time to prove the answer was build new refineries and build them we did from Aden to Scotland Australia a worldwide program grangemaster Kent levier Antwerp Dunkirk we'd stepped up Kuwait production our major sources apply and we're building the refineries to deal with it thank you and by 1955 wheat surmounted a tremendous crisis production up to 46 million tons compared with a low 25 and a half million in 1952. the policy of building refineries in consumer countries started before the abadan crisis in point of fact now more than Justified itself soon new groups of twinkling lights were changing the landscape in many parts of the world and oil was flowing once again from Persia the tankers were busy sailing the Seas of the world transporting the crew to lonely Harbors that heretofore had never seen their like and then with one major crisis behind us came crisis number two the clouds were gathering and soon we were carrying oil on Watts I'm afraid became rather Troubled Waters yes [Music] another chapter in the story of our time [Applause] if anyone by now was in any doubt as to what exactly oil had come to mean to the modern world this brought it home to them but we'd been trained to cope by now and we got around it the cape I mean for us it was essentially a maritime problem [Music] yes another challenge and once again the oil industry demonstrated its flexibility and adaptability to a watching and vitally interested world oh [Applause] back once more today is that it's not always sunny take us to some pretty hot and steamy places shades of Reynolds and Darcy [Music] oh yes if you yearn for pioneering in the old style it's still there plenty of it and yet there's excitement in the most unlikely places it's there behind the concrete formality and the morning mail for here is the real glory the interests the enthusiasms and the grumbles the record of what men are doing now to keep a mighty Enterprise alive [Applause] thank you [Music] for oil is not made it's got from that will always spring its huge and rough vitality oil thinks large oil thinks wide oil is where you find it whether it be amidst the Snows of Canada or sweating it out in some steamy tropical River indeed on the very bed of the ocean and if you don't find it well maybe you'll find yourself for oil is a trying task master [Music] and when you've found it you can be carrying it to any part of the world by the ship load North to Norway or South to Fremantle through the canals of Holland beneath the castles of the Rhine Distributing and marketing in Africa up amid the Snows of the Alps or to primitive villages on the sweltering equator or maybe your pioneering takes a Different Twist into even stranger fields and here there's no limit [Music] or there's something else you can be doing fostering the growth of whole communities New Towns villages schools homes for Progress too is where you find it and progress can only be measured by what was there to start with there too you can build or help somebody else to build create foundations for something even more enduring than an oil refinery or a tanker [Music] an Enterprise is but a company of men a gathering of human beings and the sum total of their efforts is to achieve a better life and in doing it to provide an outlet for men's Energies their urges their talents and their dreams once there was a man called Darcy who had a distant dream and that as we have seen came true and saw the light of day thank you [Music] thank you