'File 8/15 Arab Series - 1933-1939' [‎140r] (279/434)

1928, a copy of which is enclosed, in which you informed us that the appli
cant was one of your subjects who lived in El Husein village in Dhala and
requested us to grant him a passport.
3. In the circumstances we shall be obliged if you will be good enough
to cause further enquiries to be made and let us know whether Salih Hasan
is the same- man referred to in your letter dated 23rd January, 1928, and is
one of your subjects. We enclose his old certificate and a new photograph
for purposes of identification, and request that they may be returned with
your reply as early as possible.
Greetings.
Letter from the Amir of Dhala, to the Political Secretary, dated
1st August 1936.
We have received your letter No. 5553, dated 28th July, 1936, regard
ing Salih Hasan who alleges to be one of our subjects, and in reply we
inform you, oh friend, that he has sent us a letter in the year of 1346
(1927) from the sea and therein he mentioned that he is one of our subjects
and so we believed his statement and made no enquiries. When your last
letter was received we made enquiries and we could not find any trace of
his people, section or sub-section. He does not belong to Qariat A1 Husein
and there is no truth in his statement. We cannot write you lies. In his
previous letter he gave us false information but it has now been ascertained
after enquiry that he is not one of our subjects.
Greetings..
(75)
Foreign Office, Memo. No. (E.-6028/1283/25), dated the 23rd Septem
ber 1936.
Saudi-Arabian Red Sea Oil concession.
Major Longrigg, of Petroleum Concessions Limited (the I. P. C.)
called on me yesterday morning for a general talk about his recent negotia
tions with the Saudi Government. Beyond giving me a good deal of the
local background— e.g., the friendly reception he had received at Taif, the
agreeableness of the climate of Taif, the general manner in which the
negotiations were conducted, some sidelights on the personalities con
cerned, and rather a gruesome account of M. Biraud’s last illness—Major
Longrigg did not tell me much that we did not already know.
2. He produced the attached sketch map of the concession, but agreed
that it did not go much further than the text, since in the north and south
the concession is bounded by the northern* and southern frontiers of Saudi
Arabia, while inland it is bounded generally by a line running 100 miles
from the coast; but the precise method of interpreting that definition or
drawing the line has been left over for subsequent discussion if and when
oil is found in the neighbourhood of the boundary. The sketch map
throws no light on this point.
3. Major Longrigg, said that the Company intended to do its best to
develop the concession, since the payments to the Saudi Government were
steeply graded, and it would not pay the Company merely to put the
concession into cold storage. He agreed that oil experts were often un
reliable and mistaken, but he thought that there was a distinct probability
of oil being found, particularly in the southern area. The Saudis had
apparently been anxious that the Company should take on the Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Sirhan
as well, but the Company had come to the conclusion that the prospects of
oil were too remote in that area to justify them in extending the concession
to include it.
Up to Mudawara.