Born in a small town in Norway, Rieber became a seaman at the age of 15. By 1904, he was the master of an oil tanker, which was bought the next year by the newly founded Texas Company, or Texaco. He rose steadily through the ranks to become chairman in 1935. The next year he arranged for Texaco to buy the Barco oil concession in Colombia. Over the next three years he oversaw the major engineering feat of opening the remote oilfield and building a pipeline through rugged and jungle-covered terrain to the Caribbean coast.
Rieber was sympathetic to the fascist regimes in Europe in the 1930s and illegally supplied oil on credit to Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. He also purchased tankers from Germany in exchange for oil. The last tanker was delivered from Hamburg after the outbreak of World War II. For a while, Texaco continued to ship oil to Germany via South America. When Rieber's ties to the Nazis were revealed in August 1940 by British agents in the United States, there was a scandal and he was forced to resign. Rieber continued in the oil industry. Iran nationalized British oil holdings in 1951, but following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état that restored the Shah to power, Rieber negotiated an end to the dispute.
Early years
Bayonne oil storage facilities in 1970
Rieber was born in Voss, Norway, on March 13, 1882, son of the owner of a dye works in a small town about 60 miles (97km) from Bergen.[2] His family was Lutheran, and he was brought up in an environment where alcohol, dancing and gambling were strictly forbidden. At the age of 15 Rieber left home and joined the full-rigged sailing ship Hiawatha on a six-month voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco. On return to Norway he attended a school for sailors, and then found work for two years as quartermaster on a barkentine ferrying indentured Indian laborers from Calcutta to British sugar plantations in the West Indies. In 1901, aged 18, he was in command of a French sailing tanker when he was injured in a shipboard fight while docked in Delaware Bay. He was hospitalized and lost his command.[3]
After recovering, Rieber found a position as mate on a Texan oil tanker, the first to leave Texaco's Spindletop facility in Texas.[4] In 1904 he became master of the vessel.[3] Rieber's tanker was bought by the three-year-old Texaco in 1905. After three more years at sea, he was given the job of building a terminal for Texaco at Bayonne, New Jersey. The terminal came into operation before it was complete, and the wooden buildings twice burned down. Rieber arranged for them to be quickly rebuilt. Rieber was then assigned to the company's head office.[5] Rieber married Miriam Marbe in 1909. They had two children, a girl and a boy. Miriam died in 1938.[6] During World War I (1914–1918) he was superintendent of terminals and assistant superintendent of the oil refinery at Port Arthur, Texas.[5]
The first boss of Texaco, Joseph Stephen Cullinan, fell out with Texaco's directors in 1913 and left to form another oil company, American Republics Corporation. After World War I ended, Rieber left Texaco and became a vice-president at Cullinan's new company.[5] The company struggled to get organized, and in 1927 Rieber accepted an offer to return to Texaco as vice president in charge of exports and marine transportation. He acquired a fleet of new tankers and opened up markets around the world for Texaco.[7] In 1929 and 1930 he tried unsuccessfully to reach an agreement with Heath Eves of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later to become British Petroleum) for the two companies to cooperate in Europe or other markets where BP did not have a partner.[8] In 1935 he was appointed chairman of Texaco, with William Starling Sullivant Rodgers as president.[7] Rieber featured on the cover of Time magazine on 4 May 1936.[9]
In the 1930s Texaco was the fourth largest oil company in the United States, after Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony-Vacuum and Standard Oil of Indiana, but relied completely on domestic oil fields. Rieber wanted other sources of supply in case the United States banned exports to one or all of Texaco's foreign customers.[7] In 1936 Rieber bought the Barco oil concession in Colombia from Gulf Oil for $14,550,000, and sold a half interest to Socony-Vacuum, now Mobil.[10] The crude oil had to be pumped over the Cordillera Oriental across a 1,000 metres (3,300ft) pass. From there the line ran west through the low-lying Magdalena River valley, in three places running under the river or one of its tributaries.[11] The 421 kilometres (262mi) pipeline terminated at the Caribbean port of Coveñas in the Sucre department.[10] The 300 millimetres (12in) pipe was designed to be able to carry 28,000 barrels per day from the La Petrólea and Tibú fields.[12]
Most of the equipment and supplies were carried by air, a total of 5,000,000 kilograms (11,000,000lb), landed on airstrips hacked out of the jungle. This included a suspension bridge 76 metres (249ft) long as well as vehicles, power plants, plumbing and food.[13] At its peak, 5,000 local workers were employed, supervised by 400 Americans.[13] Eight employees of the oil companies were killed by Motilone Indians defending their territory.[11] 62 wells were operational when the pipeline was opened in 1939. The crude was gold-green in color and yielded 49% gasoline on straight-run refining, a very high value.[11] The last weld in the pipeline was made by Gladys Crosby Whitney, wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney.[10] Total costs to develop the field and the pipeline were $40,000,000.[10]
Standard Oil of California had acquired the rights to the Bahrain oilfield in the Persian Gulf and was seeking a partner with market presence in the far east. Rieber made an agreement for joint production with the new California-Texas Oil Company, which also took over Texaco's far eastern market. In 1939, the jointly owned subsidiary returned a total of $12 million to its parents.[14]
In common with many other business leaders, Rieber admired the efficiency of the fascist movements in Europe.[15][4] The Spanish Civil War erupted in July 1936. Under the January 1937 Neutrality Act, it was illegal to provide credit to either side;[16] Rieber met General Francisco Franco in August 1936 and agreed to supply the Nationalists with oil on credit until the war ended.[17] Neither was it legal for American ships to transport cargo to Spain; yet Texaco ships ostensibly bound for Antwerp, Rotterdam, or Amsterdam were given sealed orders, which diverted them to Spain. The oil was still priced as though Francoist Spain had transported it.[16] Customs agents discovered the scheme, causing a political scandal.[18][16] In June 1937, President Roosevelt met Rieber and threatened to embargo future shipments. Texaco was fined $22,000.[16] However, Rieber continued the shipments. He directed his associate at the Paris Texaco office, William M. Brewster, to relay to the Nationalists intelligence on the Spanish Loyalists, such as fuel amounts, cost, and type.[16] In total, Texaco delivered to the Nationalists 3.5 million tons of oil[17] for a total of $20 million.[16] For his service, Rieber was given the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by Franco.[16]
In 1936, Rieber commissioned several oil tankers from the Deutsche Werft shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, in return for oil.[19] The Skandinavia tanker was not complete before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Although the United States was neutral, the Germans did not want to release a tanker that could be used to supply their enemies. Rieber flew to Berlin to negotiate with the German naval officials.[20] He was successful, and Admiral Erich Raeder allowed the tanker to sail under the flag of Panama to ship oil to neutral countries.[6] In December 1939, Rieber and Hermann Goering made a tour of factories in Germany. They were flown by Pete Clausen, a Pan American Airlines pilot.[21] Rieber continued to ship Colombian oil to Germany, despite the British embargo.[18] According to a German secret service report, Rieber was "absolutely pro-German ... a sincere admirer of the Führer."[22]
Rieber met Field Marshal Hermann Göring in 1940 and was given a message from Hitler to President Roosevelt, inviting him to support Berlin's plan for a European Union, led by Germany, which would open its doors to the United States. Roosevelt rejected the offer. Rieber also talked with the German agent Gerhardt Alois Westrick, who was gathering information about American armaments and intentions concerning the European war.[19] After the fall of France, Westrick threw a celebratory party at the Manhattan Waldorf Astoria hotel on 26 June 1940, attended by senior executives of IT&T, General Motors and Ford as well as by Rieber.[23] Westrick posed as a trade official and made much of the huge trade potential with the new German empire once Britain had been defeated, which would soon be accomplished.[24] Westrick also met with Rieber at his head office in the Chrysler Building. The British secret service disclosed this to the American press, causing an uproar.[18]
Publicity about Captain Rieber's pro-Nazi views began to threaten Texaco's sales.[25] After a stormy meeting in August 1940, the Texaco board of directors forced Rieber to resign.[26] In July 1940, Life Magazine had published a lengthy profile of Rieber.[27] Reporting his resignation in the 26 August 1940 issue, Life portrayed him as an innocent victim whose only errors had been to dine with Westrick and lend him a Texas Co. car.[28]
Later career
Abadan Petrochemical Complex in 1970
Rieber became president of the independent Barber Oil Company after he left Texaco.[29] In March 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), triggering the Abadan Crisis. The APOC withdrew its employees, and under pressure from Britain other countries embargoed Iranian oil.[30] The Iranians asked for help from the World Bank to resolve the dispute, and the idea was floated that the bank might run the Iranian oil industry in the interim.[31] The World Bank assigned Rieber to assist Hector Prud'homme in examining the oil installations in Iran.[29] The two men arrived in Iran on 31 December 1951 and met prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh the next day, giving him a message from Robert Garner of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development before going on to inspect the facilities at Abadan.[32]
In February 1952 Rieber was part of a larger World Bank mission sent to negotiate an arrangement for restarting oil production pending agreement with the British over ownership of the assets. One sticking point was that the Iranians would not allow British oil technicians to return, and it would not be practical to find sufficient technicians from other countries. The main obstacle was the British demand for revenue sharing.[33] In 1953 the British and Americans sponsored a coup that restored the western-oriented but autocratic Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in place of the elected government.[34] Rieber became adviser to the new Iranian government, and assisted them in their negotiations in 1954 with a consortium of Standard Oil of New Jersey, Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.[35] His influence may be seen in the eventual settlement.[36]
In 1963 Rieber attended a fortieth anniversary celebration of Time magazine hosted by the publisher Henry Luce at the Waldorf Astoria, attended by many of the people that had been featured on the magazine's cover over the years.[37] He died in Manhattan on August 10, 1968, aged 86.[38]
Related Research Articles
Texaco, Inc. is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company until its refining operations merged into Chevron in 2001, at which time most of its station franchises were divested to Shell plc through its American division.
Operation Pluto was an operation by British engineers, oil companies and the British Armed Forces to build submarine oil pipelines under the English Channel to support Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy during the Second World War.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number of shares, effectively nationalizing the company. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) when Reza Shah formally asked foreign countries to refer to Persia by its endonym Iran.
The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation, and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline (petrol). Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic fragrances, and plastics. The industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream, and downstream. Upstream regards exploration and extraction of crude oil, midstream encompasses transportation and storage of crude, and downstream concerns refining crude oil into various end products.
SS Ohio was an oil tanker built for The Texas Company. The ship was launched on 20 April 1940 at the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Chester, Pennsylvania. The United Kingdom requisitioned it to re-supply the island fortress of Malta during the Second World War.
British Security Co-ordination (BSC) was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
Henri Wilhelm August Deterding, was one of the first executives of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and was its general manager for 36 years, from 1900 to 1936, and was also chairman of the combined Royal Dutch/Shell oil company. He succeeded the founder of Royal Dutch, Jean Baptiste August Kessler, when he died, and made Royal Dutch Shell a competitor to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and one of the world's largest petroleum companies.
KorvettenkapitänReinhard Hardegen was a German U-boat commander during World War II. He was credited with the sinking of 25 ships, at a total of 136,661 tons. After the war, he spent a year and a half as a British prisoner-of-war before starting a successful oil trading business and serving as a member of Bremen's city council for over 32 years.
British Tanker Company Limited was the maritime transport arm of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the forerunner of BP. Formed in 1915 with an initial fleet of seven oil tankers, the British Tanker Company became the BP Tanker Company in 1955.
Iran is an energy superpower and the petroleum industry in Iran plays an important part in it. In 2004, Iran produced 5.1 percent of the world's total crude oil, which generated revenues of US$25 billion to US$30 billion and was the country's primary source of foreign currency. At 2006 levels of production, oil proceeds represented about 18.7% of gross domestic product (GDP). However, the importance of the hydrocarbon sector to Iran's economy has been far greater. The oil and gas industry has been the engine of economic growth, directly affecting public development projects, the government's annual budget, and most foreign exchange sources.
The Petroleum Warfare Department (PWD) was a government department established in Britain in 1940 in response to the invasion crisis during World War II, when Germany apparently would invade the country. The department was initially tasked with developing the uses of petroleum as a weapon of war, and it oversaw the introduction of a wide range of flame warfare weapons. Later in the war, the department was instrumental in the creation of the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation that cleared runways of fog allowing the landing of aircraft returning from bombing raids over Germany in poor visibility, and Operation Pluto, which installed prefabricated fuel pipelines between England and France soon after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
The Kirkuk–Haifa oil pipeline was a crude oil pipeline from the oil fields in Kirkuk, located in the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul in northern Iraq, through Transjordan to Haifa in mandatory Palestine. The pipeline was operational between 1935 and 1948. Its length was about 942 kilometres (585 mi), with a diameter of 12 inches (300 mm), and it took about 10 days for crude oil to travel the full length of the line. The oil arriving in Haifa was distilled in the Haifa refineries, stored in tanks, and then put in tankers for shipment to Europe.
The Barco oil concession was one of the main concessions in Colombia during the early development of its petroleum industry, the other being the De Mares concession. Oil was first found in the Norte de Santander department near the border with Venezuela in 1905, but development did not start until 1936. A joint venture between the Texas Corporation and Socony-Vacuum sank the wells and built a 263-mile (423 km) pipeline across the mountains and through swampy jungle to the Caribbean coast at Coveñas. Workers were harassed by Motilone Indians defending their territory, and several died. The concession began operation in 1939 and continued into the 1960s, when it began to be depleted. Other fields in the region are still productive.
The Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company (PAT) was an oil company founded in 1916 by the American oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny after he had made a huge oil strike in Mexico. Pan American profited from fuel demand during World War I, and from the subsequent growth in use of automobiles. For several years Pan American was the largest American oil company, with holdings in the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. In 1924 Pan American was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal over irregularities in the award of a U.S. government oil concession. Standard Oil of Indiana obtained a majority stake in 1925. The company sold its foreign properties to Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1932. What was left of Pan American was merged with Standard Oil of Indiana in 1954 to form Amoco.
Gerhard Alois Westrick was a German lawyer and businessman who represented several major American companies in Germany before World War II. He was known for his efforts during a trip to New York in 1940 to gain support for the Nazi government. Later he turned against the regime.
Philip Dakin Wagoner was an American businessman who became chairman of the Underwood Typewriter Company.
James David Mooney was an American engineer and corporate executive at General Motors who played a role in international affairs in the 1930s and early 1940s. His career was disrupted when he was accused of Nazi sympathies in 1940.
Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 is a non-fiction book by Adam Hochschild that was first published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 29, 2016. The book is an account of the American volunteers who participated in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. The story centers around several American volunteer fighters and journalists, tracing their motivations for joining the war and their experiences during the war which left many disillusioned. The book explains the involvement of foreign leaders including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin, and explains why the Republican faction ultimately lost.
Sfax was a French Navy Redoutable-class submarine of the M6 series commissioned in 1936. She participated in World War II, first on the side of the Allies from 1939 to June 1940 and then in the navy of Vichy France until a German submarine mistook her for an Allied submarine and sank her in December 1940.
American Republics Corporation was a Texas oil company that was founded by Joseph S. Cullinan in Houston, Texas in 1916. Joseph S. Cullinan owned Farmers Oil Company and other companies. Cullinan consolidated with twenty subsidiary companies into the American Republics Corporation. American Republics Corporation became the holding company for all the subsidiary. By 1927 American Republics Corporation owned two million acres of oil land, refineries, rail tankers and tanker ships. Cullinan resigned as president of American Republics Corporation in 1928. During the Great Depression American Republics Corporation was forced into receivership. In 1936 Cullinan returned and became president again. American Republics Corporation was active in supporting the World War II efforts with oil supply and tanker ships.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
