Sahara Oil for France

For France, the bill for foreign oil imports is high. With coal, it almost equals her trade deficit. Last week the French Cabinet approved an ambitious plan that it hopes will drastically cut this bill. The plan: a $650 million to $800 million development of oil under the Sahara Desert, which France figures will provide 40% of her oil needs by 1960.

The new plan is being ramrodded by energetic, bottle-bald Maurice Lemaire, 61, State Secretary for Industry, who gained fame by his postwar reconstruction of the French National Railroads, which he bossed from 1946 to 1949. Just back from an on-the-sand survey, Lemaire optimistically figures that the Sahara can produce at a rate of 3,500,000 bbl. a year for France by 1958, although there are now only three wells. To meet that short-range goal, the Cabinet last week allocated $6,000,000 to build two 150-mile, 10 in. pipelines from the oilfields at Hassi-Messaoud and Edjeleee to the rail terminal at Touggourt in the northeast Sahara. From there the oil would travel 338 miles by train to the Mediterranean at Philippeville, Algeria. By 1960 Lemaire hopes to increase production to 70 million bbl. from reserves that are estimated at more than 7 billion bbl. To do it, the Cabinet also okayed his plan to sink 350 more wells. Another major problem is transporting so much oil across some 500 miles of desert to the sea, too big a job for two narrow pipelines and the railway. To get the oil out, Lemaire will lay down an null 530-mile pipeline from the wells directly to the Algerian or Tunisian coast.

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