Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo Laton Mccartney (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📖

mean more business for his company. The elevator doors opened and Bechtel walked past the ranks of black male receptionists in two-tone brown livery to Follis’ office. Follis greeted him cordially, pumped his hand and motioned him to a seat. He came right to the point. Socal needed Bechtel-not in California, but halfway across the world in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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At that moment, Steve Bechtel, like most Americans, had only the dimmest knowledge of Saudi Arabia: only that it was hot, long dominated by the British, far off-and brimming with oil.

Though Britain initially had no idea there was an abundance of oil in Arabia, it had taken the precaution in 1922 of having Arab leaders sign an agreement stipulating that they would grant oil concessions only to agents appointed by Britain. A decade later-in July 1932, as this agreement was about to expire, two Americans and an Englishman met for lunch in London at the fashionable Simpson’s in the Strand. 1

Present were Harry St. John Philby, a Cambridge-educated Arabist and close advisor of the Saudi king, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, and Francis B.

Loomis, former U.S. under-secretary of State and a senior executive for Socal. Socal, as Philby knew, had already struck oil on the independently ruled island of Bahrain in the Red Sea just off the Saudi coast, and was eager to extend its drilling to the mainland. Socal’s problem was the British, who owned the kingdom’s exclusive petroleum rights. Those rights, however, were soon to expire, and for a secret retainer of the equivalent in sterling of $1,000 per month, Phil by offered to intercede in Socal’s behalf with ibn Saud. By the time dessert arrived, the deal was set.

From London, Philby repaired to Saudi Arabia, where, unbeknownst to Socal, he began playing the British against the Americans.

Faced with the loss of their concession, the British offered ibn Saud

£10,000 in exchange for retaining their rights. It was, they were confident, a sum far greater than Socal would pay for what was, in the main, a worthless stretch of sand. They were wrong on both counts.

Socal offered £35,000 down, £20,000 more after eighteen months and

£5,000 more plus a royals of 4 riy als-equal to 8 shillings-per barrel for the duration of the concession. Prompted by Philby, ibn Saud accepted, and in a ceremony on July 3, 1933, in the Saudi capital of Jeddah, the Americans were awarded the concession. The Standard Oil Company of California had won the exclusive fifty -year right to search for oil across 395,000 square miles of the most oil-rich country on earth.

St. John Philby was a man of ever-shifting loyalties, both corporate and national.

During World War II, he was imprisoned by the British for pro-Nazi sympathies.

Following his release, he became a Communist and returned to Saudi Arabia, where, working on yet another secret retainer, he attempted to undermine Bechtel’s interests in favor of British companies. Meanwhile, Harry’s son, known as Kim, found employ-82

SAUDI ARABIA

Being granted the right to search for oil, however, was one thing: actually finding it was quite another. Dry hole followed dry hole, and it was not until late 1937, five years after signing the agreement with ibn Saud, that the Americans found oil in commercial quantities. Socal’s lack of European distribution capability and the onset of World War II delayed full development of the Saudi fields another five years.