Bigger Inch

The development rights to the world's greatest unexploited oil pool, under the sands of Saudi Arabia, belong to Arabian-American Oil Co. In the first major step towards marketing these vast resources (estimated potential: up to 26 billion bbls.), Aramco last week awarded contracts for the biggest and costliest pipeline in oil history. Straddling the Middle East for a distance of some 1,000 miles, the 30-inch pipe will shortcut the long haul by tanker from fields on the Persian Gulf to ports in the Mediterranean. It will cost some $100,000,000, will deliver up to 370,000 bbls. of crude oil a day, some 60,000 more than Big Inch (TIME, Jan. 6).

The route of the line and its Mediterranean terminus have not yet been determined. The biggest snag in exact planning is troubled Palestine, where Jewish terrorists last week blew up the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s pipeline in two places (see FOREIGN NEWS). But Aramco, owned by the Texas Co. and Standard Oil Co. of California, is so confident of solving--or skirting--such difficulties that it is going ahead full speed. It sent one U.S. expert to Arabia last month to set up the job, will soon send technicians to make final surveys.

The pipe will be made by U.S. Steel Corp. and Consolidated Steel, which it recently arranged to buy (TIME, Dec. 30). The purchase was held up at least temporarily last week by U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark, who ruled that it was in violation of antitrust laws. U.S. Steel will produce the steel--an estimated 300,000 tons--at its Geneva plant. Consolidated will fabricate it in Los Angeles, start delivering it by year's end.

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