The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

In an effort to educate his fellow directors, Page arranged for the intrepid journalist Wanda Jablonski, just back from the Middle East, to meet with the board of Jersey. She told them, according to a report by a British diplomat who talked to Jablonski afterward, that there was “almost universal adulation for Nasser among all classes, and a hostility towards the west that had deepened markedly. In the field of oil this took the form of a growing outcry against absentee landlordism. She had listened to many a bitter diatribe against those international oil companies who, from foreign capitals, were draining off the wealth of the Arab countries! It was intolerable that, from their remote vastness in London, New York, Pittsburgh etc., top executives of oil companies should control the economic destinies of Middle East oil producing states.” Jablonski even told the Jersey board that the existing structure of the Iraq Petroleum Company and Aramco might prove to be “short-lived,” which was about the last thing in the world they wanted to hear.