IOR/L/PS/10/302/2

Correspondence and papers relating to claims for exploratory oil licenses in Ottoman Turkey (including the vilayets of Baghdad, Mosul and Basra in Mesopotamia [Iraq], and Syria and Nejd). Principal correspondents include: the solicitors Treherne, Higgins and Company, who represent the oil explorer Roland H Silley; representatives of the Central Mining and Investment Corporation Limited (L Reynolds; Louis Julius Reyersbach); Foreign Office (FO) officials (Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe; Sir Louis Du Pan Mallet).

• correspondence concerning Silley’s claims (competing with those made by the D’Arcy Group and Anglo-Persian Oil Company) over mining rights in the Mesopotamian vilayets of Mosul and Baghdad, an historical précis of which can be found in a letter dated 14 May 1914 from Treherne, Higgins & Company to the Foreign Office (ff 111-112);
• correspondence concerning Silley’s attempts to secure oil licenses in Nejd, Silley’s efforts to contact the prospective Vali of Nejd, Bin Saud (‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd), and discussion amongst FO officials over the prospects of the Turkish Petroleum Company (in large part financed by Deutsche Bank and the Dutch Anglo-Saxon Oil Company) having a presence in Arabia and the Persian Gulf;
• a note, written by Sulaiman Nassif, enclosed with a letter dated 27 April 1914, on petroleum prospecting concession licenses in Syria (f 105).