IOR/R/15/1/659

The volume contains letters, telegrams and memoranda relating to oil production in Bahrain being undertaken by the Bahrain Petroleum Company (hereafter BAPCO). The volume is a direct continuation of ‘File 86/2 X (C 52) Bahrain Oil’ (IOR/R/15/1/658). The principal correspondents in the volume are the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Lieutenant-Colonel Trenchard Fowle the Political Agent in Bahrain, Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Gordon Loch, BAPCO’s London representative, Hamilton Ballantyne, and various British Government officials, chiefly Mr Laithwaite of the India Office.

The main subjects covered in the volume are:

• Negotiations over the terms and wording of BAPCO’s mining lease between Laithwaite and Ballantyne, including records of meetings and conversations between the two men (folios 22-33, 63-70), correspondence relating to the wording of particular clauses (including those concerning access to records of wells, royalties, arbitration of disputes and the nomination of an umpire, closure of wells), and a printed draft of the lease with pencil and pen annotations (folios 193-200);
• The arrival and departure from Bahrain of representatives of Redwood & Co., the nominated independent calibrators of BAPCO’s oil storage tanks (folios 8-9);
• Ballatyne’s visit to Bahrain in October 1934;
• Oil exports from Bahrain, including the first shipment to Japan, invoking a protest from the Persian Government, who maintained a claim on the Bahrain Islands. The Persian protest was published in the Japan Times on 17 July 1934 (folios 56-58, 116-119)
• Anticipated future production in Bahrain of 5,000 barrels a day (folio 73), and continued questions over the prospects of refining being undertaken in Bahrain;
• The appointment of Mr Russell (Bahrain Manager of the Mesopotamia-Persia Corporation) as Chief Local Representative for BAPCO in Ed Skinner’s absence (folios 17, 19-20, 45);
• The payment of lighting dues by BAPCO vessels (folios 40, 48-49);
• The arrival in Bahrain in October 1934 of a director of the Iraq Petroleum Company (folios 228-29), in connection with marketing possibilities for BAPCO oil, and amid competition between oil companies operating in the Gulf.