Word: oilmen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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First Peru struck at foreign oilmen, and now it was Argentina's turn. After a week of indecision, newly inaugurated President Arturo Illia finally bowed to nationalist pressure and signed a series of decrees annulling as illegal 13 contracts with private companies in Argentina - nine from the U.S.* For Argentina's noisy nationalists, the cancellation was a rousing triumph; for the U.S., whose oilmen have $237 million in vested in the country's oil development, it was a setback that could seriously impair U.S. relations with Argentina's new government...
...Ammonia from crude oil is a key ingredient in fertilizers, and Spencer has been buying a lot of it from Gulf. U.S. fertilizer sales have been growing 10% a year, as farmers pour on more of it to coax higher output from their Government-limited acreage allotments. Meanwhile, the oilmen have been itching to diversify because gasoline wars have hit prices (last week in the Midwest they were down another penny per gallon to 10.75? wholesale...
Conservative Lawrence Reed, who looks and acts more like a banker than an oil boomer, also worries that Congress will cut the oilmen's cherished 27½? depletion allowance. "Looking ahead," says he, "we saw that for the rest of our corporate lives we'd be in a position of liquidating our U.S. reserves, spending our money overseas and paying out large dividends. Keep that up, and I have doubts what tax position Uncle Sam would someday take." The brothers advised Texas Gulf shareholders to get out while they were ahead...
Aramco has often been criticized for bending too far to please the Saudi government and its free-spending princes instead of talking tough, as did some British oilmen in the Middle East. Aramco's view seems to be that it didn't create the Saud dynasty but must live with it, that its policy has prevented the expropriation that some Arab nationalists demand, and that whenever it could, it has tried to bring Saudi Arabia out of the 12th century...
Most of the foreign oilmen sense great potential for Argentina and want to invest even more now that the nation's worst political crisis seems to be abating (see THE HEMISPHERE). As for the contracts, Dr. Illia last week was sounding less fiery as president-elect than he did on the stump. He was beginning to talk about renegotiation instead of outright annulment...