Word: oiling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...soldiers. "This achievement will astonish the world," said Max Lejeune, France's Minister of the Sahara. Engineers threw open the valves of a 6-in. "baby" pipeline, technicians stepped forward to fill souvenir bottles. "It's here! It's here!" shouted jubilant officials. The first oil from the Sahara was on its way to France...
...French had gone to considerable trouble and expense to make the celebration possible. Sahara oil has become one of France's main reasons for refusing to yield war-torn Algeria. Politicians have held it up as treasure trove that would restore France to riches and greatness. The Hassi Messaoud field alone has estimated reserves of at least 200 million metric tons-ten times France's present annual consumption. With two years to wait for a full-sized 24-in. pipeline from the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast, the French strung the baby pipeline across 93 miles of desert...
...Algerian rebels were equally intent on proving that the Sahara's oil would never be secure so long as France refused Algeria independence. As the first shipment was being pumped aboard the silver tank cars at Touggourt, rebels blew up a section of the rail line to the coast, derailed 20 cars of a freight train in a psychological shock of their own. But the tracks were hastily repaired, the armed guard increased, and by week's end the first oil safely reached Philippeville for loading aboard a ship bound for France. In a few years, predicted...
...angry man was Enrico Mattel, boss of E.N.I., the state-owned oil and gas company which in little more than a decade has grown out of a near-bankrupt Fascist monopoly to become Italy's most successful economic enterprise. The "nasty thing," according to Mattei, was E.N.I.'s complete exclusion from Libya, where more than a dozen British, French and U.S. oil companies are engaged in a hard-driving search for oil. As Mattei told it, the Libyan government had suddenly reneged on a tentative agreement to give him a 17,000-sq.-mi. concession in the Libyan...
...many oil experts it seemed likely that Libya had been motivated by E.N.I.'s relative lack of capital, its undistinguished record in finding oil in Italy, and the understandable reluctance of a former Italian colony to admit an Italian government corporation to its territory. Enrico Mattei had a simpler explanation: unfair pressure on the Libyan government by U.S. oil companies...