IOR/L/PS/12/3808

The file concerns the political agreement between the British Government and the Kuwait Oil Company made in the event of the company obtaining an oil concession from the Shaikh of Kuwait [Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ]. The company was equally owned by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) and the Gulf Oil Corporation of the United States, but the agreement provided that the Kuwait Oil Company should be a British company.

The file covers: minutes of meetings at the India Office between British Government officials and representatives of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and later the Kuwait Oil Company; the personnel of the Kuwait Oil Company, including British emphasis on the need for the employees of the company to be British subjects, or subjects of the Shaikh of Kuwait; the requirements of the Admiralty; drafts of, comments on, and full text (folios 6-7) of the political agreement (signed on 5 March 1934: signed copy, folios 26-27); discussion of the pre-emption clause in the agreement (designed to meet the British Government's oil needs in the event of a state of national emergency or war); discussion of requirements for landing grounds and air facilities in Kuwait, including correspondence from the Air Ministry; the recommendation of the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf that APOC should be required to give an assurance that actual oil exploitation should be in British hands only, and that the American interest of the group should be purely financial (folios 174-175); discussion of communications requirements (telegraph, wireless, and telephone); the need to persuade the Shaikh of Kuwait of the strength of the new company, to diminish the risk of his turning towards the Standard Oil Company of California (folio 101); APOC agreement to inform HM Government of any intention to transfer any part of its 50% holding in the Kuwait Oil Company to another company (folios 83-90); the Admiralty's desire that the political agreement should not be communicated to the Shaikh of Kuwait until the commercial agreement was signed, in case Standard Oil used it to advance their claims to the concession (folio 16); and text of the commercial agreement between the Shaikh of Kuwait and the Kuwait Oil Company (folios 8-11).

The file also contains papers relating to the Qatar oil concession. Most of the correspondence is from John Charles Walton of the India Office, and other British Government officials; the file also includes correspondence from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

Kuwait generally appears in the papers in the form Koweit.

One document is dated 1914 (folios 91-93).

The file includes a divider, which gives a list of correspondence references contained in the file by year. This is placed at the back of the correspondence.