Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

Their fee: 3 percent of the sale price of every barrel of oil Hammer shipped out of the country. Between the officials and de Rovin-not to mention the cost of the five years Oxy’s engineers had spent wandering in the Libyan desert-Hammer had made an expensive commitment.

The investment, however, soon paid off. Awarded drilling rights to several supposedly worthless plots formerly owned by Mobil, Oxy drilled two miles into the earth and struck a pool of oil yielding a phenomenonal 70,000 gallons a day.

Before Hammer could begin cashing in on his gusher, however, he had to resolve a host of problems. One was dealing with de Rovin and Allen and Co., both of whom he had abandoned when the well came in, and who had just as quickly filed lawsuits against him. Another was finding a way to cope with the battalions of Libyan contractors, sup-144

LIBYA

pliers and government bureaucrats who had been besieging his offices since news of the strike. Then there was the small matter of transporting the oil he had discovered 130 miles to the nearest port. A pipeline would have to be built, costing tens of millions-money that Hammer at the moment did not have. Moreover, the line would have to be built quickly, since, under Libyan law, Hammer could not begin writing off his exploration expenditures until he began exporting crude. As if all this were not enough, rumors were spreading of an impending revolt against the aged and decadent King Idris, who was now spending most of his time with Queen Fatima vacationing on Turkey’s Marmara coast.

When everything was put together, it was apparent that Hammer needed assistance-and fast. Enter the Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel’s people knew oil, and they knew Libya: how to do business there, how to build there-and how to pay the baksheesh that made both possible.

The company had been working in the country since 1958, when it built a pipeline for the French government, then owner of a 10,000-square-mile concession in Libya’s western desert. The pipeline was a relatively minor affair, as, at the time, was oil exploration in Libya itself. Since gaining its independence in 1952, the country had been struggling to overcome the devastation wrought by World War II, as well as decades of Italian colonization. Port and refinery facilities were meager; the most notable modern enterprise in the country was Wheelus U.S. Air Force Base outside Tripoli, where nuclear-laden Strategic Air Command bombers were ever on the alert.

The situation might never have changed, but for the Suez Crisis of 1956. With the canal temporarily blocked, oil shipments from the Persian Gulf had slowed to a comparative trickle. Much of the oil that was getting through had to be shipped around the Cape of Good Hope, making it vastly more expensive. Eager to develop a new supply of cheap petroleum closer to Europe, the oil companies began moving into Libya in droves.

One of those companies was Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso), which in 1959 contracted with Bechtel to build a 130-mile pipeline from its fields in Zeltan to the Mediterranean port of Mersa Brega.

When IBI executive vicepresident Jerry Komes arrived in Tripoli to begin lining up the job, he was informed that contract or no, things didn’t get done in Libya unless “special arrangements” were made with the king’s chief advisor, Mustafa ben Halim. Without Halim’s backing on the Esso project, Bechtel experienced delays and frustrations.

Born in Tripoli and trained as an engineer at the Egyptian University 145