2. To create Franco-British companies to carry out this agreement;
3. To establish a State monopoly in France, which, under pressure of diplomatic conventions, would be bound to keep off American competitors.
On January 21, 1919, although the War was over, the mandate of the Petrol Commission was extended for another six months. The State retained the monopoly of buying oil and the system of the consortium. That prevented our oil-men from working hand in hand with the Standard Oil as they did before the War.
Then, on January 30th, M. Clemenceau granted diplomatic powers to M. Henry Bérenger. He immediately sent commissions of inquiry into every country in which France might have petroleum interests, to London, Warsaw, Bukarest, Constantinople, Baku, and Mesopotamia. M. Bérenger was all in favour of a great scheme for founding an inter-allied company in which the French State, bringing as its share the German concessions which would be ceded to her by the treaty of peace, should enter into association with Great Britain and the Royal Dutch. On March 7th, the Walter Long-Bérenger agreement was signed, fixing the broad outlines of a common oil policy in Mesopotamia, Rumania, and eventually in Galicia and Russia. It was a preliminary sketch of the San Remo Agreement. It remained only to prepare for its realization. Eighteen days later, without losing any time, the Royal Dutch offered to co-operate in the plans of the French Government in matters concerning the management and exploitation of the various oil interests which might be reserved to France as a consequence of the treaty of peace. It proposed, moreover, to place at France's disposal "all its world-wide technical, industrial, commercial and financial organization, not only in the countries mentioned, but also in all other countries" in which she might need its co-operation. And it offered to supply France by priority, in time of peace as in time of war.
M. Clemenceau welcomed the proposal. In order not to offend Parliament and public opinion, which was tending more and more in favour of a national oil policy, the Royal Dutch entered into partnership with one of the great commercial banks, the Union Parisienne, in order to create with its concurrence companies of which the nationality, if not the capital, should be French.
In this manner were created the Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles in July, and the Société Maritime des Pétroles in August 1919, the former with a capital of 20 million francs, and the latter of 10 million francs. In the first of these companies five out of nine of the directors bear names well-known in the Royal Dutch: Deterding, Gulbenkian (the Talleyrand of oil), Colijn, who at one time nearly succeeded Deterding and who has been Minister of War in the Netherlands, Cohen, Jonckheer, Hugo. France has only a minority on the Board of this "French" company, for M. Deutsch de la Meurthe, whose influence brought over the Cartel of Ten from the side of the Standard to that of the Royal Dutch, is little more than the mouthpiece of London and The Hague. The Royal Dutch, besides, subscribed 60 per cent. of the capital of the Société pour l'Exploitation des Pétroles, though it now holds only 49 per cent. In the Société Maritime des Pétroles, the disproportion is still greater; out of seven directors, two only are French, and have played an important part in French politics during the last few years. It is to them, in particular, and to the skill of Gulbenkian, who conducted the negotiations very cleverly, that the Royal Dutch owes its triumph in French official circles.[45]
But the British Government is not content with these two companies founded by the Royal Dutch, (The second is so little French that 19,600 out of the 20,000 shares of its capital belong to the Anglo-Dutch trust, and 400 only have been subscribed by the two French members of its council.) In spite of the opposition of Parliament, it authorized the Anglo-Persian to found a company much more important than the other two put together, a company with a capital of 227 million, the Société des Huiles de Pétrole. This Franco-British Anglo-Persian was created by one of the most powerful personalities of the financial world in Eastern, Southern, and Western Europe,[46] to whom Great Britain owed the policy she was then following against the Turkish Empire.[47]
Through the agency of Sir Basil Zaharoff, who is interested both in the Société Navale de l'Ouest and in the Banque de la Seine, and holds 70 per cent. of the capital of Vickers, this British firm undertook to construct immediately, giving preference over the other trusts, the whole of the tank-boats, of 10,000 tons on an average, destined to ensure to the new "French" company the monopoly of the transport of oil for the French market. France will depend for its future supplies, in great part, on this Franco-British Anglo-Persian. Its stations will be found on all her coasts, as well as in her African possessions. The Société Générale des Huiles de Pétrole will erect vast reservoirs at Dunkirk, Le Havre, Rouen, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Bizerta, Algiers, Oran, Casablanca, and Dakar (Senegal).
As the United States will probably still have the advantage for another dozen years as regards oil supplies—for it is not very likely that they will exhaust their reserves so soon as 1927, as the Smithsonian Institute pretends—, the new enterprise set out to gain immediate control in the matter of tank-steamers.
Everything being thus prepared in the banks and chancelleries, it only remained to drive out the Standard Oil from the French market and to establish firmly the monopoly of purchase and importation granted provisionally to the Petrol Commission. On May 6, 1919, M. Henry Bérenger announced in the Chamber the profits which remained for the State under the consortium system—profits not paid into the Treasury, but devoted to a special object, the development of the petroleum industry; and on June 17th, M. Klotz brought forward a Bill to establish this monopoly permanently.