BERLIN e ROME e WASHINGTON e CAIRO e ~ HAVANA ~ e BUENOS AIRES Really an octopus? j PRENSA LATINA TH Standard Oil Company (New Jersy) and the var- ie a Other Rockefeller- tne of Oil interests represent ton the most powerful insti- Sin the world today. They ind “Present an international longed perhich is being chal-. “htinent the people of every . ep (Standard Oil—New Jer- Yen an has gross annual re- M excess of 11 billion ree t accounts for about ery aot a half million barrels othe € oil a day — 16 percent Winlg, CUtPut of the capitalist i Ae : Oi Addition, the Socony Mobil Oi company and the Standard ach Ompany of California are Fy, Out one third the size of ‘| bing 28 have largely overlap- Ownership. The Standard arate ny (Indiana) and the ea Oil Company are also on eller companies with n8 foreign holdings. ; "adard of New Jersey, Stan- iit California and Socony Se three members of the tes €n cartel which also in- Vgig, T8XACO and Gulf (US) Royal Petroleum (UK) and UK), Dutch Shell (Netherlands- E Hho Produces 18 percent of of ~ Crude oil, 41 percent Per Nezuela’s, 67 percent of teen, 9 percent of Libya’s, 77 ‘bout te France’s. It controls ey Oil Percent of Middle East- Rec, 80 has 18 refineries in Western Europe —::4d accounts for a quarter of its oil produc- tion. It has overtaken British oi) in the Middle East and reached to a situation where there is more American than British military power deployed in that area. In 1957 Esso’s crude oil pro- duction exceeded that of Royal Dutch-Shell by 28 percent, in 1963 it did so by 48 percent. Esso admitted a little over one billion dollars profit in 1963. This is after certain capital ex- penditures and unreal costs, and with large payments to top offi- cials being subtracted as part of employee compensation. Still further hidden profits ex- ist. A good example occurs in Esso’s bookkeeping at Creole, its subsidiary in Venezuela. Esso claims only 247 million dollars net profit in Venezuela after paying 475 million in tax- es and royalties to the Venezu- elan government. But this figure is derived from a total revenue which allows $2.09 per barrel of oil product, whereas the value of that oil on the world market is $7.19. Using the same basis for ‘Creole as for Standard of New Jersey, and calculating as if each stage of production and distribution contributed to price in proportion to the fixed capi- tal invested, a price for Vene- zuelan oil comparable to $7.19 world wide would be $4.53 per barrel. This is 63 percent of the world wide average, and 217 Esso expansion figures since the war 1946-63 1957-63 tits 470 percent 62 percent cruge oil output 210 Mg 39 ae total payroll 160. =i” vy 2 number of employees 30 o 0.7 ” percent of the price admitted by Esso. It would bring Esso’s pro- fits up to more than the billion dollars which they report as total value of their product in Venezuela, and it would mean that Esso’s share is about three times that of the Venezuelan government. This in light of the fact that total wage and salary .payments come to only 24 cents a barrel. During the 19th century, the Rockefellers rose to the level of the Morgans in wielding power in America. Economic and poli- tical battles were fought with equal ruthlessness. From the 1880’s until 1911, John D.. Rockefeller’s personal associates Marcus Hanna and Nelson Aldrich practically ran~ the Republican Party, and some- times the country. When the system began to expand rapidly, in.the 20th cen- tury, Rockefeller-Standard Oil played a leading role. By 1963 Esso alone accounted for 20 percent of the total overseas in- come of U.S. corporations. Parallel with its expansion abroad, Standard Oil increased its ties with U.S. foreign and military affairs personnel. Dul- les, Herter and Rusk were all closely involved with the Rocke- fellers. The interests of Standard Oil can be traced like a.red thread through American foreign policy — cold war and hot war: in Eastern Europe, against Hung- ary and Rumania who national- ized Standard Oil holdings; in the Middle East, in the occupa- tion of Greece and Turkey and the establishment of bases in Arabia; in Cuba, where diplo- matic relations were broken off after the nationalization of Esso refineries, and in Vietnam, where Standard oil is the major bene- ficiary of “foreign aid” orders. In Rumania and Cuba Stand- ard Oil tried economic sabotage. It still controls the economy of Venezuela. A. A. Berle Jr., a great ad- mirer of Standard Oil, wrote a TOKYO e _ESSO: tiger on the prowl book called The 20th Century Capitalist Revolution. In it he Said that in certain parts of the world an American corporation must do its business directly with the government and culti- vate “personal relations with the proper officials.” He praised these corporations for “more nearly achieving a stable and working: world gov- ernment than has yet been achieved by any other institu- tion.” His outstanding illustra- tion was the oil industry. Berle. had one reservation. ~The use of power by an Amer- ican corporation sometimes reaches open conflict, and the US. government must be called in. The. balance of world forces has been shifting against Stand- ard Oil. Growing Soviet oil pro- duction is beginning to break its monopoly. Oil cartel enter- prises which have been nation- alized, and government enter- prizes, which have been set up in Ceylon, India, Indonesia, the UAR and Italy, provide addi- tional competition. Mexico has long defied the oil cartel, and Peru and Argentina are taking timid steps in that direction. It remains to be seen whether the new dictatorship in Brazil will be able to reverse that country’s trend toward na- tionalization. Ultimately, the two most’ cru- cial fronts between Standard Oil interests and popular move- ments will be the Middle East Almost insurmountable ob- with support in February 1964. Is a De Gaulle victory inevitable? ternational). Few political ob- and on June 25 the mayor of and Venezuela. Stacles seem to face the French Left in its attempt to find a Viable alternative which might Prevent the Gaullist candidate— Probably De Gaulle himself — from being elected to another SIX year term in the December Presidential election. The opposition is in a state of Confusion and the opinion polls Show a reverse in the anti- Gaullist trend of 18 months ago. The IFOP (French Institute of ublic Opinion) estimates 45 Percent of the French people are satisfied with government Policies and 35 percent are dis- Satisfied. In February 1964 the IFOP estimated that the disatisfieds had a slight edge over the satis- fieds. Since then a series of by- elections, beginning with the Sensational Communist victory In the safe UNR (Gaullist) seat of Dupont, have shown that the 80vernment’s support is less than at the last general elec- tion. They cannot, however, be Used to compare support today > The IFOP showed dissatisfac- tion with the government’s so- cial, economic and agricultural policies, and satisfaction with its educational and foreign poli- cies. The latter is hardly sur- prising, since even the politburo of the French Communist Party is in favor’ of much of De Gaulle’s foreign policy within and without Europe. The IFPO found only 20 per- cent without opinion. This is surprising, since the non-voters, whom Jean-Paul Sartre called the largest party in France, generally number around 40 percent of the electorate. These opinion poll figures throw into relief the problems of the Left in the coming elec- tion. With the election four months away and De Gaulle all- most certain to run, only the extreme right has nominated . candidates — two of them. The left is caught in the an- guish of the Socialist Party — SFIO (French Section of the Working-class — second — In- has © servers think that De Gaulle can be defeated in December under any conditions, but the socialist mayor of Marseilles, Gaston Deferre, decided some time ago that De Gaulle should be opposed by a_ federation which would include the MRP (Christian democrats) and the Radicals, with Deffere himself as candidate. Most of the MRP’s support- ers will vote for De Gaulle in any case, and such a federation would preclude the support of the Communists who represent 20 to 25 percent of the poten- tial vote. At the SFIO convention in June, a narrow majority gave Deferre permission to go ahead -with his proposals, in spite of the opposition of general-secre- tary Guy Mollet who was re- elected. For three weeks Deferre was a candidate for the French presidency. Then _ negotiations fell through due to the intran- sigence of the centre parties, Marseilles withdrew his candi- dature. He continued to support the concept of cooperation with the centre, but his views were de- feated by a large majority of - the Socialist national commit- tee. Instead, Guy Mollet’s pro- posal for a federation which would exclude both the Catholic MRP and the Communists was adopted. The only other socialist party of any significance in France is the PSU (Socialist Unity Party) lead by Pierre Mendés-France. The PSU has shown no great sympathy for the assortment of federations which have been proposed, but favors the type of unity which would include the Communists. Waldeck Rochét, general-sec- retay of the Communist Party, has announced that his party will attempt to rally the “pro- gressive forces” around its own candidate put forward at an op- portune moment, if the Social- ists continue to reject Commu- nist proposals for cooperation. J September 3, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5