The Mexican products are transported from Mexico to this country, as well as many others, by the large fleet of Eagle oil tankers, the property of the Eagle Oil Transport Company, Ltd., which admirably managed concern of £3,000,000 capital is also presided over by the Hon. B. C. Pearson. The Eagle Company possesses the largest oil tankers afloat, many of them carrying over 15,000 tons of bulk oil, though others to be built are to be considerably larger; an 18,000 ton tanker is, indeed, already in commission.
Another highly important enterprise in the world of petroleum is that of the Burmah Oil Company, Ltd., which, as its name suggests, is occupied with the petroleum industry in Burmah, and catering for the almost unlimited needs of the Far East in regard to refined petroleum products. It controls enormous acres of oil-bearing territory held under lease from the Burmah Government, possesses extensive refineries at Rangoon, and has quite a fleet of oil tankers. Its capital is three and a half millions sterling, and its consistent success may be judged from the fact that it has paid over 400 per cent. in dividends. Of comparatively recent date, the Burmah Oil Company has turned its attention to other fields, particularly to Trinidad, but it is in connection with the development and subsequent operations of the fields of Burmah that the Company is chiefly concerned.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Ltd., which is closely allied to the Burmah Oil Company (capital, £6,000,000) by reason of its large interest therein, has come into prominence during recent years, owing mainly to its agreement with the British Government, in which the latter has invested over £4,000,000 of the public moneys in the enterprise. The Company acquired its petroliferous concessions from several interests, including the Burmah Oil Company and the late Lord Strathcona, which had been granted to them by the Persian Government. When I mention that the Company’s concessions cover an area of, approximately, half a million square miles, and on which petroleum has been found in quantity on the majority of the small areas already examined, the significance of the enterprise will be somewhat appreciated. There is no doubt that the company’s success is doubly assured, and, from this point of view, the investment of the public moneys in the undertaking has been sound finance, especially when one considers the important part which petroleum products under British control must hereafter play. As a matter of fact, the proposition is a well-paying one to-day, and it is asserted that the Government’s interest is already worth no less than £20,000,000. Persia as an oil-producing country will occupy a very prominent place. The Company has immense petroleum-producing fields: it has its pipe-line to seaboard, and its refineries, situate on the Persian Gulf. It has possibilities without end, and it is rapidly availing itself of them. The Company also now owns the entire capital of three formerly German-owned concerns in London—the British Petroleum Company, Ltd., the Homelight Oil Company, Ltd., and the Petroleum Steamship Company, Ltd. Consequent upon these acquisitions, the Anglo-Persian Company, Ltd., is making arrangements to enter the English market as distributors of Persian petroleum. The question of transport need not here be considered, for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company owns the entire capital of the British Tanker Co., Ltd. The Company thus has the producing and refining possibilities: the acquired concern of the Tanker Company, together with that of the Petroleum Steamship Co., will suffice to bring its products to the English market, while the large distributing organizations of the British Petroleum Company and the Homelight Oil Company, owning depots all over the country, will offer easy facilities for the distribution of the petroleum products imported. My argument all along has been that the advent of the British Government into this enterprise—I will not call it a speculation, though at one time it looked like it—places all that private enterprise, which in the past has brought all the products of petroleum to our own doors at a reasonable and competitive price, at absolute discount. Ever since the petroleum industry assumed proportions of international magnitude, and we became more or less (I should have said more than less) dependent upon our necessities being met by petroleum and its products, private enterprise has always kept us well supplied. But the Anglo-Persian Oil Company has made immense headway since the Government took an interest in its operations, and its appearance on the English market as a refiner of Persian crude oil and a distributor of the products thereof, is but a reflection of the prolific nature of the vast fields in Persia which it possesses. It has decided upon having its first English oil refinery near Swansea, and it is reported that this will be in operation before the end of 1920. It has also secured the control of the Scottish shale oil refineries which will be used for the treatment of Persian crude oil when occasion warrants.
A FEW OF THE BURMAH COMPANY’S PROLIFIC PRODUCERS
One might go on to interminable length in briefly referring to the great concerns whose operations have been responsible for the expansion of the world’s petroleum industry to its present magnitude, but the exigencies of space prevent this. The brief list of companies already referred to represents an amalgamation of capital to the extent of nearly £120,000,000 sterling, though this cannot be considered as representing more than one-half the total world’s investments in petroleum enterprises.
So far, I have not touched with the magnitude of the petroleum companies operating in the distributing oil trade of England, though, to some extent, this may be gathered from the references to such companies as the “Shell,” the Anglo-Mexican Petroleum Company, etc.
Practically the first company of any magnitude to distribute petroleum products in this country was the Anglo-American Oil Co., Ltd., which has actively engaged in this branch of commerce for the past thirty years. It imported and dealt in American oils long before the advent of the companies before mentioned, and, to-day, is certainly one of the largest—if not the largest—company so engaged. Its name is known in every hamlet in the country: its tank cars are seen on every railway, and its depots are to be found in every centre throughout the length and breadth of the land. Its name is legion. Its capital is £3,000,000, and it is to the Anglo-American Oil Company that, throughout the clatter of European War, the credit is due for having supplied us with those almost unlimited quantities of petroleum products so necessary both on sea and land, for it is the largest importer in the Kingdom. As its name implies, the “Anglo” deals mostly in American petroleum products: it was at one time the importing concern of the Standard Oil Company, but to-day it purchases broadcast in an endeavour—and a very successful one, too—to supply the British consumer with all the petroleum products he requires.
The present chapter deals, I feel, most inadequately with the general question of concerns whose interests are directly allied with that of petroleum; in fact, it was not my desire to give an encyclopaedia of the thousands of companies so engaged, but, rather, to suggest the names of a few which have secured world-wide distinction.