IOR/L/PS/12/3811

The file concerns negotiations over the signing of the commercial agreement between the Shaikh of Kuwait, Shaikh Ahmad al-Jabir as-Sabah [Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ] and the Kuwait Oil Company. The agreement provided the company with exclusive rights to exploit oil, gas, and petroleum products within the state of Kuwait (also referred to in the papers as Koweit). The company was equally owned by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) and the Gulf Oil Corporation of the United States. The agreement was the counterpart to the political agreement between the British Government and the Kuwait Oil Company, the negotiations for which are described in file IOR/L/PS/12/3808: Coll 30/89 'Oil: Koweit Oil Agreement between the Koweit Oil Company and His Majestys Government.'.

The file covers: the need to expedite the signing of oil concession agreements in Qatar and Kuwait, in view of a further substantial discovery of oil in Bahrain (folio 472); minutes of India Office officials, commenting on the negotiations; drafts of the Kuwait commercial agreement (including a bilingual English and Arabic version, folios 191-204), with discussion and comment; the need for the commercial agreement not to come into force until the government (political) agreement had been concluded (folio 417); comparisons between the Kuwait and Qatar agreements (e.g. folio 407); the need for the Shaikh of Kuwait to be informed of the existence of the agreement between the British Government and the Kuwait Oil Company before the commercial agreement was signed (e.g. folio 354); the views of the Foreign Office on how to ensure that the concession was awarded to the Kuwait Oil Company, and awareness of the need to be able to defend the British position to the Government of the United States (folios 325-330); discussion in general of American interests in the concession; minutes of meetings held at the India Office between British Government officials and representatives of the Kuwait Oil Company; Kuwait intelligence summaries; correspondence (some of it in both English and Arabic), and records of meetings between the Political Agent, Kuwait and the Shaikh of Kuwait; frequent discussion of the question of the appointment of a Chief Local Representative to act on behalf of the Shaikh; British suspicions of the role of Major Frank Holmes in the negotiations; discussion of the financial terms of the Kuwait concession (folios 58-62); and a letter on the subject of the concession to Messrs Traders Limited (folios 7-10).

The main correspondents are the Foreign Office; representatives of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and the Kuwait Oil Company; the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf; and the Political Agent, Kuwait (Major Harold Richard Patrick Dickson, and, acting for Dickson, Major Ralph Ponsonby Watts).

The Arabic language content of the file consists of approximately twenty-five folios.

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.