Help for Spain

Since 1929, when Dictator de Rivera seized U.S., British, French and Dutch oil properties and merged them into a graft-ridden state monopoly, U.S. oilmen have been kept out of Spain. Recently, Spanish industry, which has been pinched by an oil shortage, has prodded Dictator Franco into dickering with U.S. oil experts to come back into Spain and step up oil production.

Last week, the news leaked out that Caltex Oil Products Corp., a joint subsidiary of Standard Oil Co. of California and The Texas Co., had made a deal to help build and operate a refinery in Spain, near Cartagena, at a cost of around $18 million. Caltex would put up part of the money, and own 24%. The rest would be 24% owned by Cepsa, the state oil monopoly, and 52% by another state company, Institute Nacional de Industria.

Caltex has already been supplying about 30% of Spain's oil needs with crude oil shipped from the Persian Gulf wells of its co-subsidiary, the Arabian American Oil Co. With the new plant, Caltex would refine 15,000 to 20,000 barrels daily of Aramco oil at Cartagena.

The U.S. State Department disclaimed any knowledge of the deal. It said that, since no U.S. oil exports were involved, Caltex could do as it pleased.

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