Word: matteis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...boss of Italy's state-run oil monopoly (ENI), Enrico Mattei is a bitter foe of private enterprise. In 1957 he bulled through a punitive Italian oil law which put such restrictions on private oil companies that Gulf, the last U.S. firm wildcatting on the peninsula, got out (TIME, Feb. 4, 1957). Five months ago he got a concession in Iran in return for a promise to turn over 75% of oil profits, thus overturning the fifty-fifty pattern now in effect in the Middle East...
...last week in Sicily, which encourages private enterprise (TIME, Dec. 9), Mattei got his comeuppance from private enterprisers. They had gathered to discuss the thriving new oil industry on the island, which had been started after Gulf brought in the first well. Mattei appeared at the meeting to try to grab some credit for what had happened. For an hour he decried private initiative, said that only his "army of technicians." which are "perhaps the best in the world." can properly serve the interests of Italians and Sicilians...
...told, Mattei's ENI produces only 200,000 tons of oil a year in all of Sicily and Italy, and Italy must spend $510 million to import enough oil for its needs. From its Ragusa field alone Gulf expects to produce 1,600,000 tons this year, eight times as much...
...Place. Libya was only an episode in a Mattei campaign that threatens to upset all the painfully negotiated agreements between Western oil companies and Arab governments in the Middle East. Mattei calls it a feud, and dates it from the day he applied for partnership in the international consortium that now runs the rich Iranian oilfields. "At the time," recalls Mattei, "E.N.I, had only two drilling rigs and no experience. The consortium laughed and denied me my place at the table...
...Mattei set out to harry the major U.S. and British oil companies with every means at his disposal. He tried unsuccessfully to drive foreign oil firms from semi-autonomous Sicily, succeeded, through his influence over the Italian Parliament, in getting them excluded from Italy's promising Po Valley. Then, in a far more ambitious challenge, he began to move into the Middle East, offering Arab governments terms seemingly more generous than the standard fifty-fifty split negotiated by British and American companies. Under one such agreement, an E.N.I, subsidiary is now producing some 600,000 metric tons...