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

by Daniel Yergin

To be sure, there was no shortage of opposition to amalgamation, beginning on political grounds. Public hostility to “oil trusts” was not much less in Britain than in the United States. But the strongest opposition came from the Admiralty, which continued to be antagonistic to Shell. The Navy’s original rationale still remained; the government, as one official commented, “did not go into the Anglo-Persian Company to make money but to form an independent Company for national reasons.” The Admiralty had also become deeply attached to its right to obtain fuel oil from Anglo-Persian at a substantial discount from the going market price, especially as the Navy’s budgets were under constant threat of cutback. And, of course, Anglo-Persian itself vehemently opposed the amalgamation. Charles Greenway had not fought so hard to turn the enterprise into an integrated oil company in order for it to become merely an addendum to the hated Shell.