'File 5/1 III Kuwait Oil Company' [‎9r] (22/766)

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
AN GLO PERSIAN OIL CO , L TI>
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Altliougii from very ancient times Persia has been known as a country possfssiiig oil. it is on’y
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within quite recent years, as the result of the work done at immense expense by tin Anglo Persian
Oil Company, that the Persian nation has derived any real profit from its oil resoums.
For over a generation after the discovery in the United States of America that wells had to be
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drilled for hundreds of feet into the earth before there was i ny chance of oil in commercial quantities
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being secured, the Persian fields lay untouched, none of the great oil companies of the World linking
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upon them as of sufficient value to repay the heavy cost of sinking Ust wells in the regions remote
from the sea where it was thought oil might possibly be found.
Today Persia stands in the forefront of the world s oil producing countries, and last year the
national exchequer received over JP. 500,000 from royalties abrnr paid upon tin oil. In addition
the Anglo Persian Oil Company that year paid in wages to 20,000 subjects of the Hiah for work done
in the Oilfields, Refinery, and other places, the colossal sum of 1,100,000 while many thousands
ot other Porsiaus who supjdied the great industry with foodstuffs and materials, shared between iht m
the further huge sum of ^ 400,000 spent locally by the Company on these supplies.
These are some of the wonderful results that have come to Persia f«om the operations of the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, an enterprise that in little more than ten sh rt years, and though seriously
interrupted by the World War, has built up a vast industry, by far the mist important in Persia today,
I in the distant regions ot Arabistan and the B^khtiari Country that helore ware looked upon as among
the least valuable parts of the Shah’s domains.
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To the enterprise of one man-;he late William Knox D’Arcv, a New Zialander hv birth —Persia
owes a great debt af gratitude, for \i him must In given the credit for first discovering the oil wealth
of the country. Mr. D’Arcy, who had made a fortune by developing the copper irdustry in Australia,
became interested in Persia, where he believed, in spite of the failure of earlier exp’orers, that oil
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