Ready to Move

Around a T-shaped table in the office of Interior Secretary Fred Seaton, 25 representatives of 15 major oil companies met last week to demothball a tool left over from Suez. The oilmen were the backbone of the Foreign Petroleum Supply Committee, whose members formed a special committee to keep Europe's oil flowing in 1956 during the Suez crisis. Present purpose: to keep oil coming in case the fields in Iraq--or any other Arab land--should be suddenly shut down. Said Seaton: "We must be prepared to move, and move quickly."

Seaton wants the industry to operate in much the same manner as during Suez, but on a wider scale. Instead of concerning itself chiefly with alternate transportation for oil that normally passed through the canal, the new Middle East emergency committee will stress production as well. All the major overseas operators will be members, plus several wholly domestic companies, which were excluded from the Suez committee. For better coordination the plan provides a fulltime government employee (probably Oil Import Administrator Matthew Y. Carson Jr.) as chairman--rather than an industry representative, as during Suez. With details already worked out, Seaton figures that the committee could swing into action on 24 hours' notice.

The steadiest thing about the Middle East last week was the oil flow. Aside from a moderate jump in tanker charter rates and a flurry of ship sales which in three weeks boosted prices 10-20%, all was calm. Iraq's revolutionary government took pains to assure Western oilmen that it would honor all contracts, would not only maintain oil production but try to increase it. The British-French-American-owned Iraq Petroleum Co. welcomed this feeling of sweet reasonableness, but in common with oilmen everywhere took it with a pinch of salt.

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