INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM TRIES TO BLOCK ALGERTAN PIPELINE from J, Atkinson
The Oil and Gas Journal, April 27th, reported:
"It may take 6 months or more to decide on just who will build the Sahara's third major crude pipelimw system. Ben Bella's Government has let a contract to two British firms. Now TRAPAL, owed by 17 oil companies (5 of them American) has appealed for arbitration under the Evian Agreement of 1962, which supposedly guaranteed producing companies the right to build transportation for their oil. Each party in such a dispute has one month to select an arbitrator. Then the two will select a third. The three man board has six months to reach a decision.
"Technically, such an appeal for arbitration should mean an immediate halt to work on a disputed project. But the British contractors say they are continuing, TRAPAL doesn't really seem very confident of winning. It appears to be going through the legal motions to test the official Algerian attitude to the Evian Agreements."
The same issue of the journal carried an article about Al Zeria's attitude towards 0O.P.E.C. (Organisation of Petroleum Expo rting Countries) s
"Algeria may or may not become the 9th member of OPEC, SPEC officials are confident the Algerians will join....but after OPEC talks in Geneva, Bachir Boumarza, the Algerian Minister of Economics, refuses to say whether or when Algeria will join the group.
“Algeria, which is exporting more than 500,000 barrels a day of Saharan oil, is clearly eligible for membership. It has been content up to now to send observers to OPEC meetings. Boumarza is working overtime to keep his oil industry off balance" (that is, with greater demand than supply) " “without any help from OPEC. He wouldn't talk about OPEC at Geneva, but some of his associates were not so close~mouthed. Privately they were pretty _ scornful of OPEC - which they regard fas too conservative for the revolutionary frame of mind in Algeria."