Mistress of one of the foremost oil-carrying fleets, Britain next sought, until 1922, to monopolize almost all the remaining resources of the world. The Royal Dutch-Shell, British Controlled Oil-fields, and Anglo-Persian Oil were valuable auxiliaries of the Foreign Office for this object. According to Dr. David White, one of the members of the American Geological Survey, this is what Great Britain possesses to-day:—
| Million barrels. | |
| Canada: the whole of the deposits are reserved for British control | 995 |
| Algeria, Egypt: 50 per cent. | 462.5 |
| Persia, Mesopotamia: 75 per cent. | 4,365 |
| S.E. Russia, S.W. Siberia, Caucasus: 50 per cent. | 2,925 |
| Rumania, Galicia, Europe: 50 per cent. | 1,567.5 |
| New Russia and Sakhaline: 50 per cent. | 462.5 |
| Dutch Indies: 50 per cent. | 753.75 |
| India: the whole | 995 |
In Peru alone have the United States triumphed over Great Britain. The discovery of oil there is due to the English. But, thanks to the power of its capital, the Standard Oil, through the medium of the International Petroleum Company, managed to acquire the shares of the four most important British companies. And the United States at present controls 70 per cent. of the output there, the British retaining only 27 per cent. and Italy 3 per cent. The Peruvian production, however, is not very high; it does not yet reach 3 million barrels.
The need for oil has grown so great that the deposits containing this precious liquid fuel are greedily coveted by the various governments which take shelter behind financial groups. There is a shortage of 250 million tons of coal on this planet, and it produces only 98 million tons of oil. But no Government can boast, in this matter, of having shown a foresight equal to that of Great Britain.
The British Government is no longer content to-day to encourage, favour and defend its own nationals. Better than this, it makes conquests or establishes protectorates having as essential object the reservation exclusively for its nationals of new oil-bearing territories, such as Persia and Mesopotamia. The treaty recently imposed on Persia was nothing but a disguised protectorate. Fortunately for Britain, the Soviet Government has voluntarily given up its advance into that country since it concluded a trade agreement with London. And it is sufficient to read the Treaty of Sèvres to see the underlying motives of the British negotiators: the desire to monopolize the oil of Asia, and anxiety to keep out the United States, all the oil-fields left to France being in particular granted to her with the idea of a future British participation.
The British Government is so jealous of its position in Mesopotamia that it will not even tolerate American prospectors there, and certain incidents have happened in connection with which the disappointed Yankees have asked the State Department at Washington to demand satisfaction.
The British oil policy is not uniform. Sometimes, when it seems possible, she gets possession of proved oil-fields. Sometimes, in the case of a country which would hold its own, she negotiates for an advantageous share in the profits—this is what happened with France by the San Remo Agreement—or she makes contracts ensuring abundant supplies of the precious mineral oil.
When a State does not fall in with her views sufficiently quickly, Britain does not recoil from any means of pressure. This is what led Admiral Degouy, in April 1920, to write: "As a corollary to well-known negotiations with one of the richest countries in oil in the Near East, the British Admiralty has organized and is maintaining on the Danube a numerous flotilla of gunboats and river monitors." The reason is easy to guess.
From 1918 to 1920 an unofficial squadron of small Russian steamers, requisitioned and armed by Great Britain, dominated the Caspian Sea, so that Batum, the port of embarkation for oil on the Black Sea, and Baku, its place of production, were both in the hands of the British. They disposed of the petroleum and mazut there at their own pleasure, permitting no control over their purchases. Britain first took as much as she could; it was only afterwards that she allowed France to replenish her stores in turn, provided there was any petroleum left.[29]
Thus ends the work of Lord Fisher, who applied himself for more than thirty years to the problems of oil. Thus end the experiments and observations conducted modestly and quietly for so long at Portsmouth.