File 3877/1912 Pt 5 ‘Turkey in Asia: oil interests’ [‎23r] (47/60)

c In any further communication
on the subject, please quote
no. W. 36846/16.
Foreign Office
and address—
The Under-Secretary of State,
Foreign Office,
London.
March 2nd, 1916
Sir:-
(1) With reference to my letter of the 29th
Immediate .
Confidential,
ultimo, enclosing a copy of a letter from the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Limited, Secretary Sir
E. Grey considers it important that the assumption
should he at once controverted that w the Company
would, in any case, in the event of any change
in the Middle East favourable to British interests
occurring, he given complete oil rights over any
portion of the Turkish Empire which may come under
British influence’ 1 .
(2) The D’Arcy group, as distinct from the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, were interested in the
Turkish Petroleum Company. The interests of that
group never extended to certain portions of the
Turkish Empire, such as the Parsan Archipelago,
where His Majesty’s Government, before the war,
were committed to support other British groups
whose claims would in any case he entitled to
careful, and probably to preferential, consideration.
(3) But apart from these aspects of the
question, and from that of whether the D’Arcy group
is in fact entitled to a claim of monopoly in
Mesopotamia in regard to oil rights, Sir E. Grey
deems it essential that the whole attitude of His
Majesty's
The Under Secretary of State,
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. .