مجموعة ١/٥٤(س) "لجنة الشرق الأوسط (الرسمية): إعادة الإعمار" [و‎‎١‎٤‎٠] (٩٤٠/٢٨٣)

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XXIV, AFGHANISTAN
123* No oil is produced in Afghanistan and all
petroleum products are imported by a State petroleum monopoly,
either over the Pakistan border (Shell, Socony-Vacuum and
Caltex being the chief suppliers) or from the Soviet Union,
124# In 1927 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (as it was
then called) was unofficially offered a concession covering
Afghanistan, but it declined the offer on the grounds that
the Tirpul area between Herat and the Indian frontier, where
there are oil indications, was in the Russian economic
sphere and that the inaccessibility of the area made it
commercially unattractive. The Burmah Oil Company and the
Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company likewise considered the
possibility of taking up a concession in Afghanistan, but
they also gave up the idea, because the remoteness of the area
from seaboard would have rendered development work extremely
costly, while, if oil were found, the cost of a pipe-line to
some point on the coast of Makran or the Persian Gulf would be
prohibitive.
123. Undeterred by these objections, two United States
companies, the Seaboard Oil Company of Delaware and the
Texas Corporation, formed a joint concern called the Inland
Exploration Company of America with a capital of #5,050,333
for the purpose of negotiating for and .exploiting a concession
in Afghanistan, A concession agreement was signed by
representatives of the Afghan Government and the company in
Berlin on the 19th November, 1936, This agreement was modified
in Kabul on the 18 th January, 1938, in order to embody certain
of the provisions of the Amiranian Oil Company’s concession
in Persia, which were more favourable to the Government,
126, The exploration area covered the whole of
Afghanistan, but the company was bound by the terms of its
concession to select within 3 years five areas for
exploitation, the rest of the area being abandoned. 127
127 , The company’s geologists carried out surveys in the
north. The main area of oil possibilities is in Northern
Afghanistan in the region between Khanabad and Maimana, which
forms part of the Turkoman Basin, which in Southern Uzbekistan
contains the Termez oilfields situated north of the river Oxus,
and another near Sar-i-Pul, 65 miles south-west of Balkh and
about the same distance north-east of Maimana, Both these
areas, were not far from producing fields in the Shirabad
region in Soviet Central Asia, on the further (north) side of
the Oxus, The Afghan Government refused to allow the company
to put down test wells in this northern territory. The
company also examined the Tirpul area, which was found to be
disappointing, and it started to survey some districts further
to the south, but the Afghan officials prevented it from
carrying out a thorough examination.