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Name, Surname: Roberto, Cantoni Affiliation where the research was conducted: Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), University of Manchester. Brunswick Street, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK Current Affiliation: LATTS – IFRIS. 14/20 Boulevard Newton - Plot B, 2e étage. Cité Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne 77447, Marne-la-Vallée cédex 2, France Mobile phone number: +33 (0)1 81 66 84 41 email addresses:
[email protected]
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The Enemy Underground: Geostrategic Intelligence and the War in Algeria During the Algerian war (1954-1962), beside the war events proper, another conflict took place: a diplomatic and technocratic battle for the possession of Saharan oil resources in the name of national energy security. Its main actors were France, Italy, the US, and Algerian independence fighters. In the case I analyse in this paper, I show that the three Western-block countries used their local knowledge of the subsurface given by the collaboration of the three elements of: 1) geoscientists, 2) their national oil companies, and 3) their respective diplomatic bodies, in order to carve out a prominent place for themselves in the exploitation of Saharan resources. Algerian nationalists also succeeded in benefiting from this knowledge. I argue that this struggle for natural resources in a post-independence scenario, and the corresponding role of the geosciences in it, significantly contributed to influence the final configuration of the postwar Algerian hydrocarbon sector. Keywords: oil prospecting, geosciences, security, Cold War, Algeria
List of frequently used acronyms Aramco BRP CFP CREPS ENI FLN CGG GPRA NATO OCRS SDECE SONJ
Arabian-American Oil Company Bureau de recherches de pétrole Compagnie française des pétroles Compagnie de recherche et exploitation des pétroles au Sahara Ente nazionale idrocarburi Front de libération nationale Compagnie générale de géophysique Gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne North Atlantic Treaty Organization Organisation commune des régions sahariennes Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage Standard Oil of New Jersey
On 22 October 1956, the French Air Force, with the support of the secret services and a number of ministers from the cabinet of Prime Minister, Guy Mollet, hijacked a Moroccan plane carrying four historical leaders of the Algerian pro-independence, nationalist Front de libération nationale (FLN). The plane was travelling from Rabat to Tunis, where the four were expected to meet the Tunisian President, Habib Bourguiba, and was under Moroccan protection. It was forced to land in Algiers, and its passengers were arrested.1 Soon after the arrest, the French press speculated that among the
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documents confiscated from one of the arrested, Ahmed Ben Bella, were some revealing that the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), a company shared among US, world-prominent oil companies Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New York, Texaco and Standard Oil of New Jersey (SONJ), funded the Front in exchange for priority exploration and exploitation rights in the hydrocarbons sector, if and when the country achieved independence. 2 In an oil world that was at that time largely dominated by an oligopoly of seven Anglo-American companies (known as the majors), which could significantly exert their influence over diplomatic environments in their respective countries, the Aramco affair clarified that the Algerian War was not only a domestic French conflict – Algeria being then French territory - based on military confrontation, as it has been depicted for a long time in popular and historical literature, but was a multi-national affair involving the control of hydrocarbons and the knowledge needed to find them. 3 And this characterization occurred despite whether there was some truth in the claim of Aramcoʼs involvement. The latter aspect is further highlighted by the fact that, while the affair was developing in public, the French public oil authority, the Bureau de recherches de pétrole (BRP), was secretly negotiating with US oil companies in order to have them involved in the exploration of the Sahara desert.4 As I will show, this apparently contradictory behaviour, namely denouncing US interferences in Saharan affairs while seeking American technical help, had instead a very precise rationale, and exemplifies well the French dilemma of asserting the stability of its power in Algeria while having to cope with the new, Cold War balance of powers. France was not the only country to be faced with a geostrategic dilemma though: Algeria, and North Africa generally, was of paramount importance to US administrations. This was not only because of the regionʼs resources, but also because of US military facilities there (notably in Morocco). The US, in addition, worried that if France, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member like the US, persisted in asserting its colonial influence over the area, both newlyindependent countries and countries seeking independence, could look for help from the Communist block, thus fatally jeopardizing US – and Western - interests there, and extending Soviet influence to the farthest shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Fearing that, US administrations wanted France to concede some form of autonomy to North African territories under its influence. At the same time France, as an ally of the US within the Western block, served to guarantee Western influence there through its presence in North Africa. This dilemma had repercussions on FrenchAmerican relations during the entire war, and this adds to the significance of an analysis of the Algerian War from a multi-lateral standpoint. 3
The historiography of the Algerian War (1954-1962) has tended to focus on political, diplomatic, military and cultural aspects. 5 Not unexpectedly, analyses have come mainly from the French academic milieu, and have mostly focussed on French-Algerian bilateral relations. However in the last fifteen years international aspects of the war, as well as the involvement of third parties in it, have also been investigated by works in the history of international relations. 6 Thus Samya El Mechat, Irwin Wall and Matthew Connelly have produced studies on French-American-Algerian diplomatic triangulations; Martin Thomas and Christopher Goldsmith have focussed on AngloFrench wartime dynamics; Jean-Paul Cahn and Klaus-Jürgen Miller have worked on West Germanyʼs position during the War, and Bruna Bagnato has analysed the development of Italyʼs ambiguous standpoint in the same period. The focus of multi-laterality is not unjustified: such was the extent of international involvement in the Algerian War that Connelly went so far as to define it a ʻdiplomatic revolutionʼ. Despite the abundance of sources on the War, however, two interconnected topics have mostly been neglected: the search for energy resources and how this objective intersected with security issues. Yet the struggle to prospect for and access oil and gas in the Algerian Sahara was significant to the development of the conflict. This reveals that a comprehensive analysis of the historical circumstances of Algeriaʼs independence cannot be complete unless one examines the use of science to retrieve natural resources and its relation to issues of power. 7 Oil is indeed mentioned to different extents in works on the war, but how geostrategic knowledge about the subsurface was acquired and employed to achieve strategic objectives, has yet to be explored: the technoscientific side of the story has mostly been black-boxed.8 As we will see, oil diplomacy was not only the job of official diplomats, but that of oil technicians and technocrats, who themselves have acted as policymakers and diplomatic agents. While these multiple roles have already been emphasized by Ronald Doel, Allan Needell and others, these authors mainly explored connections between scientists – geoscientists in particular – and the military. I show that this is also the case in the petroleum industry, where scientific intelligence-gathering is not necessarily directly linked to military aspects.9 During the early Cold War, the exploration of Algerian subsoil was closely linked to French national security, as the Sahara was one of the areas that France sought to develop to achieve energy autonomy from Anglo-American majors. Indeed a number of these large, international oil firms (such as SONJ, Standard of New York, Texaco, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Royal Dutch4
Shell) had significant activities in the French mainland (in French, referred to as the Métropole), where they dominated the production and distribution markets. In this study, I look at processes of political decolonization and concurrent ʻoil-onizationʼ of Algeria, focussing on the role of the institutions and oil companies from France, the US and Italy. In 1954, the discovery of the first dry gas field at the location of Djebel Berga by the Compagnie de recherche et exploitation des pétroles au Sahara (CREPS), a British-Dutch-French joint-venture of Royal Dutch-Shell and a French public oil exploration agency, the Régie autonome des pétroles, marked the starting point in the production of Algerian hydrocarbons.10 Major discoveries in 1956-57 (Edjeleh and Hassi Messaoud for oil, Hassi RʼMel for gas) ignited a confrontation between several countries over control of the regionʼs resources, placing the future of French oil security at risk. Between 1957 and 1958, US companies started negotiating with French authorities for access to new areas for exploration. From 1958, the French foreign secret services noted with concern that European and Japanese companies were following suit often by negotiating with the FLN rather than French authorities. 11 Among these was the Italian state oil company, Ente nazionale idrocarburi (ENI), which will be the focus of the second half of this paper. Besides confirming the role of oil as geopolitical resource, these historical events also reveal the geopolitical function of geostrategic data. The collection of intelligence on the Algerian subsoil carried out by US diplomats and oil technicians strengthened the role of the US in the Cold War, and helped American oil companies to enter Algeria. Meanwhile the French need for financial and technological resources to carry out a thorough exploration of the geologically complex Saharan area facilitated the involvement of foreign enterprises in Algeria. The presence of these foreign interests, in turn, influenced the quest for Algerian independence as French plans to retain control, through geostrategic intelligence, of colonial resources failed to materialize, while the Algerians succeeded in getting hold of important details on oil deposits and organizational aspects of the oil business that allowed them to have the upper hand in peace negotiations with the French. I start by outlining how the US interest in the Algerian subsoil materialized after the first commercial oil and gas discoveries in the mid-1950s. I then show how major policy and legislation changes in the French hydrocarbon sector caused the American presence in the region to increase: a result that was both wished for and feared by French administrations longing to acquire advanced geoscientific knowledge without losing control of Algerian territory. I then show how Italy and specifically ENI also became involved in the quest for Algerian resources. I analyse how the Italian company managed its agenda of negotiating with both French authorities and Algerian nationalists, 5
eventually taking side with the Algerians in order to obtain favourable exploration permits in exchange for geoscientific and organizational information. Early findings and American interest in Algeria Up to the first North African oil discoveries in 1956, American companies, ubiquitous in other areas of the world such as the Middle East and South America, where they had already found or were confident they could find oil reserves, were conspicuous by their absence from the Saharan region. This was for two reasons: first, the restrictive provisions imposed by the French BRP, which obliged foreign companies to be minority shareholders in French-dominated joint-ventures, and which the US majors, accustomed to operational autonomy – and unlike smaller, independent US companies – would not tolerate. Second, the difficult conditions of prospecting in the desert put off potential investors. The characteristics of the Saharan subsurface, the high costs of operations, and a hostile climate deterred surveyors. However early surveys, though only partly successful, did attract foreign interests. By 1952, the American government led by President Harry Truman – who was to leave office at the end of that year – had put the oil activities in Algeria under surveillance. Hydrocarbons steadily grew in importance in the thick political and economic reports that the American Consulate General in Algiers sent to the State Department. The British government also instructed its agents abroad to find out what the French were doing, and received detailed information from its Parisian embassy about BRPʼs five-year development plans.12 As the Americans and British continued to deploy intelligence assets, the BRP and successive French administrations realized that they needed to increase their prospecting effort if they aimed to find oil anytime soon. They had two options. They could let Anglo-American enterprises in, thereby gaining in efficiency, financial backing and technological knowledge, while partly renouncing operational exclusivity. Or they could continue independently and preserve an all-French approach, thus taking responsibility for a colossal prospecting burden which might last for many years, with unknown results. The latter option was risky for a country struggling with heavy inflation. A long debate ensued among the chief officers of French oil agencies on the question of letting foreign companies in the country. In late 1951 for example Shell officers informed the Governor General of Algeria, Roger Léonard, of their intention to ask for a vast exploration permit. This request generated a debate within BRP. Some expressed the opinion that Anglo-Dutch participation would indeed be possible, but that it 6
would be preferable for the company to be constituted with French minority participation. Others however, were afraid that the resources attributed to Shellʼs activities would be taken from the French overall budget for oil exploration in the French Union (and thus from the BRP), but maintained that room for Shell could be found in the Sahara if they accepted French participation in their exploration activities in Canada and Venezuela. Eventually only Shell was admitted in partnership with French public agencies in 1953, a decision that had possibly been favoured by close personal links between the French Fuels Director, Pierre Guillaumat, a top-class mining engineer trained at the most prestigious French academies and a wartime secret agent, and Shell technicians who had worked with him during World War II.13 Shellʼs admission, together with the fact that no American company was allowed the same privilege, may also be explained by the lesser geopolitical threat that Britain represented for French power in North Africa, in comparison to the Atlantic superpower.14 Beside being a boon for French energy supplies, the 1956 discoveries of Hassi Messaoud and Hassi RʼMel were also the result of transnational technological advances. They had largely resulted from the reintroduction of the technique of seismic refraction by the Compagnie générale de géophysique (CGG), Franceʼs main provider of geophysical services for oil exploration. 15 Seismic refraction permitted an estimate of the properties of the earthʼs subsurface from an analysis of refracted seismic waves generated by man-made explosions: by eliminating the confusing multiple reflections, which affected what was at that time the most widely-employed technique, namely seismic reflection, refraction penetrated younger geological layers characterized by high reflection coefficients, thus producing a picture of deeper layers. 16 Moreover seismic refraction had been backed up by a series of technical improvements in geophysical methods and equipment, such as the use of multiple detectors and shooting patterns, and of very-high-frequency radio transmission equipment, which considerably enhanced communications between observers and shooters. The US-pioneered introduction of magnetic recording also had important consequences by improving record interpretation and presentation; allowing the adding of seismograms from the explosion of individual dynamite charges used in seismic surveys; making seismograms indefinitely reproducible and modifiable, and determining the typical signal related to a particular marker bed.17 CGGʼs purchase in 1954 of the first American IBM analog computers for processing seismic data records further aided data analysis and interpretation (besides giving the US company valuable information about the state of French geophysical progress). The deployment from 1955 of small transport planes facilitated the work of prospectors, as did the introduction of 7
portable recording equipment. 18 CGG and smaller French geophysical companies started to use this new equipment thanks to links they established with US manufacturers. In the early postwar period BRP President and Fuel Director, Guillaumat, adopted an ingenuous strategy: concessions to US companies in mainland France would be reciprocated by US training and equipment for French technicians. Unlike admission of US companies to Algeria, French authorities deemed this plan less threatening for national interests. This strategy was rewarded by the 1956 findings. The discoveries of the mid-1950s, and the subsequent estimates of the their magnitude, generated much optimism in the French industrial envir onment: at the beginning of 1957, experts reckoned that from 1959 Saharan oil would make it possible to cover a quarter of Franceʼs needs, and even achieve complete self-sufficiency within fifteen years. Thanks to carefully-devised legislation, French capital had the lionʼs share in the Algerian oil field, amounting to almost 80% of the total. 19 For French administrations revenues from the newlyfound hydrocarbons were also expected to contribute significantly to investments in industrial development and to attenuation of poverty, which had been exacerbated by the ʻrebellionʼ in 1954.20 In the wake of the an important oil discovery at Edjeleh in 1956, Olivier Wormser, Director of Economic and Financial Affairs at the French Foreign Ministry (usually referred to as the ʻQuai dʼOrsayʼ), urged his government to hasten the development of Saharan oil. That was seen as an essential step toward the countryʼs energy autonomy. However, in a clear manifestation of the French dilemma mentioned in the introduction – keeping control of the Sahara while admitting non-French capital and technological power to exploit its resources adequately – , such aspiration to autonomy had to be harmonized with the French desire for acquiring new technological knowledge from the USA. Indeed French authorities explicitly started asking for US help in exploration. Resorting to US expertise was quite common, as in the case of the French public Société nationale de recherches et exploitation de pétrole en Algérie (REPAL), which approached the Independent Exploration Company of Houston, Texas, to carry out seismic work in several widely scattered areas of its concession. By 1954, the year of the outbreak of the Algerian War, geophysical activity in the Sahara was expanding at an impressive rate (Fig. 1).21 The conflict threatened this growth. It also threatened European security. From 1956, French forces started withdrawing from the German border – where they were stationed from after World War II in accordance with war treaties – to be transferred to North Africa, with NATOʼs reluctant approval.22 That greatly worried US State Department analysts, who believed the Algerian War was divid8
ing the non-Communist world between Arab and anti-colonial countries on one side, and colonial powers on the other. Franceʼs internal instability, worsened by the North African conflict, could trigger “a most serious internal crisis […] with unpredictable results on the future of French democracy and on Franceʼs alignment with Nato”.23 On the other hand, as Connelly reports, NATOʼs executives were also facing a dilemma, since a French political and military withdrawal would remove Algeria from the NATO area, eliminate its bases there, and possibly reduce Algeria and the Maghreb to chaos. In the words of the chief of the British delegation at NATO, Sir Frank Roberts, the best solution one could think of was therefore “to continue discreetly to encourage the French to come to terms with Arab nationalism while they can still count upon the help of such relatively moderate Arab leaders as the present rulers of Morocco and Tunisia”. 24 French administrations, on the other hand, did not seem to share that view; in addition, they greatly feared that the Americans wanted to replace them in North Africa: a view that was shared by highplaced personalities such as French Prime Minister, Mollet. 25 But while the US government continued for long time to officially support French Algerian policy in international diplomatic contexts such as the UN, US majors had not remained idle. On the contrary, they had been closely monitoring French oilfield activities. Figure 1. Geophysical activity in Algeria (1952-1965). As the graph shows, geophysical exploratory works increased until 1959, so by the time the war was over in 1962 activities had been decreasing already for a few years.26
A Libyan incident and the Aramco affair The Algerian War not only divided diplomats, it also had serious repercussions for the oil sector. While the Sahara was not particularly touched by military confrontations after 1957, it was the site of a high level of prospecting activity.27 Initial tensions between American companies and French administrations occurred in the first months of 1956, when the French Foreign Legion exposed illegal prospecting activities by two technicians from the American major, SONJ, at the border between Algeria and Libya, close to the Edjeleh oilfields, just a month after oil had been struck. SONJ had obtained a large exploration permit in Libya bordering Edjeleh, and that represented a splendid excuse to monitor the activities of the British-French company, CREPS .28 Following this episode, Paul Moch, the French President of CREPS, called for support from the National Defence. 9
Forty legionnaires were summoned to protect the field from prying eyes. 29 At this point, a territorial dispute ensued between SONJ officials, Libya and Algeria regarding Libyan-Algerian borders. SONJ informed the Governor General of Algeria, Robert Lacoste, that a well drilled by CREPS, in the permit of Zarzaitine, was on Libyan territory, and was therefore part of the SONJ permit. Reportedly the companyʼs chief geologist had asked for the support of the Libyan government on these grounds. Immediately after receiving the news, and fearing SONJʼs influence over the Libyans and the diplomatic consequences of a French-Libyan dispute, Lacoste suggested that the State Secretary for Algerian Affairs, Marcel Champeix, contact the Libyans as soon as possible in order to settle the border issue to the French advantage.30 In April Jean Blancard, Guillaumatʼs successor at the Fuels Directorate from 1951, met on two occasions with SONJ board members to discuss the Libyan affair. The American representatives reassured the French they had not made any claim about Zarzaitine, but did not clarify their position re garding the ownership of the well, and left the French worrying that the US major might make a claim at some point.31 In any case, the majorʼs monitoring made it clear to the French that SONJ was very interested in entering the Algerian business, with or without French consent and, if need be, by wielding its influence on Arab countries in order to achieve its goals. The territorial dispute was only solved in December 1956, after two months of bitter negotiations. The French managed to gain an appreciable amount of land, and preserved the entire territory surrounding the Edjeleh oilfields. Significantly, during the Libyan affair, the US government, while officially supporting French policy in Algeria, did not intervene to prevent SONJ from taking a stance that could upset French interests. President Dwight Eisenhowerʼs administration did not deem it wise to compromise its relations with Libya either, especially considering the growing interests of US oil companies there.32 Negotiations were also affected by two almost simultaneous events: the arrest of the four FLN chiefs described in the opening and the Suez crisis. The striking aspect of the October 1956 plane hijacking was that the action had not been authorized by Mollet, who judged it a terrible mistake. The arrest of the four provoked protests from Arab countries, and prompted a démarche by the FLN representative in the US, Mohamed Yazid, as well as the Libyan government.33 While Mollet lent weight to the rumours about Aramcoʼs involvement in funding the FLN, the US Ambassador in France, Clarence Douglas Dillon denied the allegations, as did Aramco executives. Douglas Dillon also made sure the French did not publish the relevant 10
documents.34 However, Mollet never retracted his claims, even when he discovered Lacoste had passed the rumours to the press without checking their likelihood. For the State Departmentʼs staff, that was a clear indication of Lacosteʼs influence on Mollet in Algerian affairs. Rather tellingly, in an internal memorandum, a marginal note to a sentence explaining Molletʼs attitude warned that the story “must of course not be used under any condition”.35 Indeed, Molletʼs early policy of negotiation with the FLN (which he soon modified) had made him so unpopular among French settlers in Algeria that Lacoste enjoyed far more authority there. 36 Aside from Molletʼs behaviour, a further point annoyed State Department officials. As mentioned, at the time the Aramco affair was unfolding, the French oil administrators were striving to convince American companies to become involved in the exploitation of the Sahara. An officer from the BRP had been sent to the US expressly to persuade them. Molletʼs ʻcarrot and stickʼ approach, State Department analysts reckoned, was intended to draw the Americans in Algeria, in order that the USA support French policy there. 37 The rationale behind the direct appeal to US companies can also be found in Mollet governmentʼs awareness of the laissez faire policy adopted by the US government vis-à-vis its national companies in North Africa. Instead of having US companiesʼ officials secretly dealing with the FLN, the French Prime Minister understood it would be better to reach agreements with the Americans directly. This amounted to a reaffirmation of French authority in Algeria. However, the Director of the Office of Western European Affairs, Matthew Looram, believed that if the Americans accepted those advances, French public opinion would see it as a clear sign that US oil companies, with the support of their government, were trying to corner the French in the region. 38 If that happened, American interests would be damaged, rather than furthered. Indeed, after the FLN leadersʼ arrest there had been contacts between Aramco and the Algerians, albeit indirectly. In November 1956, the companyʼs Vice-President, James Duce, had received from King Saud of Saudi Arabia a request to contribute to a fund for the prisoners. Aramco had left the issue pending, but actually kept in touch with the FLN. Rumours about Aramcoʼs actions to undermine the French in Algeria continued throughout 1957.39 As we see from both the Libyan incident and the Aramco affair, soon after the discoveries of 1956, diplomatic tension between France and the USA regarding Algerian resources started to mount. As the same time, the French oil elite faced a dilemma: between the need to acquire technologies and capital, and the threat to its energy security caused by potential foreign access to Algeria. It therefore devised a plan to accomplish the former without triggering the latter.
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Divide and rule? An institutional stratagem to keep control of Sahara The FLN chiefsʼ arrest was near contemporaneous with another major political event, the joint British-French-Israeli expedition to intervene in the Suez Canal crisis. In October 1956, British, French and Israeli armed forces launched an attack over Egypt, in response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasserʼs decision to nationalize the Suez Canal, a major point of passage for oil tankers from the Persian Gulf to Europe. Occurring slightly more than two weeks after the plane hijacking, the attack yielded an outcome totally different from what the aggressors had hoped. 40 American intervention to stop the invasion by enacting a Saudi-supported oil embargo to France and the UK had turned the invadersʼ swift military success into a political débâcle. Nasserʼs position came out strengthened, as well as that of Arab nationalists in general. The outcome was the worst-case scenario for the French. Nasser was aiding the FLN, both militarily and financially, and it was in Cairo that FLN political leaders were finding refuge.41 For the State Department officers, the Suez crisis proved the French approach to the Algerian conflict endangered the world order the US advocated. The only practical result of the expedition had been the impairment of European access to Middle Eastern oil, jeopardizing the full operating capacity of West European military apparatus, and thus making it potentially more vulnerable to Soviet attack. 42 After Suez, oil provision became an even more urgent issue for Molletʼs government. Due to the closing of the Suez Canal, the consequent Arab embargo, and the sabotage of pipelines connecting Iraqi oilfields to the Mediterranean coast (France sourced a large share of its oil from Iraq through the Iraq Petroleum Company at the time), France was forced to rely solely on its Iranian oil, shipped to the Métropole around Africa. This oil, however, was expected to satisfy only half the countryʼs needs. In these circumstances, the ability to fully dispose of, and exploit Algerian resources, became critical.43 Believing a solution to the oil exploration problem must be found within a broader administrative framework, the French government established a new administrative framework to facilitate an adequate development of Saharan resources. In January 1957, the Organisation commune des régions sahariennes (OCRS) was constituted. It included the Saharan portions of Niger, Chad, Mauritania, French Sudan (today, Mali) and Algeriaʼs huge Saharan départements of Oasis and Saoura (Fig. 2).44 Besides the economic rationale, according to historian Pierre Boilley, the creation of OCRS had a further geostrategic value, in that controlling the Sahara would allow France to se12
cure the possibility to intervene in the whole of North and West Africa, as well as offering a large territory for withdrawal, in the event of a new occupation of the Métropole (after the one occurred during World War II).45 In the same month, viewing this as a first step to separate the Sahara from Algeria, the FLN’s US representative, Yazid, called for UN sponsorship of a new round of negotiations based on the recognition of Algeriaʼs right to independence, before the consolidation of OCRS would make it factually impossible for the Algerians to recover Saharan hydrocarbons. The appeal was immediately rejected by Mollet.46 According to the French Prime Minister, the Algerian question lay outside the UNʼs competence. The French supported this line by lobbying almost forty ambassadors, and at the UN by having Foreign Minister Christian Pineau personally meet most heads of delegations, all while agents from the French foreign secret services (SDECE) sought to bribe a number of representatives.47 Figure 2. Map of the Saharan départements of Oasis and Saoura
Soon after OCRSʼs establishment, and with the view that possible FLN actions might disrupt the oilfieldsʼ operation, a mixed civil-military study group was set up, with representatives from a number of ministries including Fuels Director, Blancard, and BRP’s President, Guillaumat.48 The group was meant to outline measures for the protection of Saharan oil and gas installations and industrial plants, as well as of locations of strategic importance such as Colomb-Béchar or Reggane, where the French army was experimenting with remotely-controlled missiles. Such strategic function would become evident in the early 1960s, when the Algerian sites of Reggane, Hammaguir, In Ekker and Béchar were chosen for the first French nuclear tests; the French detonated their first nuclear bomb at Reggane in February 1960.49 The French Army collaborated in the effort by sending further regiments of parachutists and helicopters, and through the creation of a local militia, which would also protect oil transport infrastructures. The construction of a network of military airports close to the most sensitive installations of the French Union was also agreed upon. 50 While defending oil facilities from possible nationalist attacks, such militarization was also a strong indication of the French determination to control exploration sites. In June 1957, a Ministry of Sahara was established – significantly, as distinct from the existing Ministry of Algerian Affairs – to manage the two new desert départements. According to the law instituting the new ministry, the minster of Sahara would also be de jure the OCRS delegate general: however, this act moved the central administration of the Sahara from Algiers to Paris, which went 13
in the opposite direction to the very spirit of co-participation of the OCRS. 51 Socialist Minister of Sahara, Max Lejeune, affirmed that foreign capital would not be excluded from investment in OCRS, with the proviso that the nationality and independence of French Saharan enterprises not be up for discussion.52 By separating the Saharan regions from the northern Mediterranean belt, the French government believed it would be easier and less risky to make administrative concessions to an Algeria amputated from her richest areas: essentially, the creation of OCRS was an early move to separate the Sahara from northern Algeria, as confirmed then by a number of high-placed French officials.53 Not long after the creation of OCRS, in March 1957, US Vice-President, Richard Nixonʼs mission to Africa also focused international political attention on North Africa. “Through his demagogical handshakes”, Italian Ambassador in Paris, Pietro Quaroni, caustically commented, Nixon sought to tighten US links with African countries such as Tunisia and Morocco, contextually weakening French influence in that region. 54 In his final confidential report to Eisenhower, Nixon explained that French prestige was rapidly decreasing in the area, and that there was a widespread conviction in North African governmental circles that the French could no longer sustain a massive military effort.55 In November 1957 British and American deliveries of weapons to Tunisia, a country that was patently supporting the Algerian fighters, did nothing to consolidate French trust in the AngloAmericans, and exasperated the Quai dʼOrsay. While it does not seem that the US government overtly aimed to replace the French, both the US State Department and oil companies saw the end of French colonialism as harmonious with ʻthe sense of historyʼ, as two secret SDECE notes explained. 56 Essentially therefore, according to the French services, the US government would not oppose attempts by non-European French territories to achieve independence, as that had the added value of permitting US influence to extend in those territories. Significantly, a US plan designed by Eisenhowerʼs Economic Advisors and included in the Presidentʼs doctrine of economic assistance to Arab countries as a counter to the Soviet Union, supposed Algeria as independent.57 American economic penetration, therefore, went hand in hand with moves toward political independence for former colonies in Africa. However, SDECE warned, such an acquisition entailed Franceʼs “suppression as a world power”.58 One may not go so far as supporting the apocalyptic conclusion of SDECEʼs argument; however, the basic terms of its analysis seem to correctly reflect the main stance kept by the US Government. While Nixonʼs thoughts regarding Algeria remained unknown to the public, this was not the case 14
for a speech given early in July 1957 by US Democratic Senator, John Kennedy. Now openly supporting the Algerian nationalists, Kennedy pressed Eisenhowerʼs government to take a definite, proindependence position, maintaining the Algerian issue had become by then an international affair. 59 Kennedyʼs discourse was represented as a brilliant victory achieved by the FLN within the diplomatic sphere.60 The US government distanced itself from the Democrat senatorʼs declarations, but SDECEʼs argument was that Kennedyʼs talk reflected American public opinion,61 and according to El Mechat, the main lines of the senatorʼs discourse corresponded to the State Departmentʼs analyses.62 Indeed from 1958 State Department analysts considered Algerian independence as inevitable, and they would rather have France concede it to Algeria, than have Algeria snatch it from France.63 From 1957, changes in the French BRPʼs mining policy prompted American oil companies to solicit permits in the Sahara. The establishment of OCRS may not have excited the majors, due to the conditions imposed by the French, as well as an early US policy, still in force, on non-interference by US firms in regional politics. But the Eisenhower administration saw the OCRS as a way to associate otherwise weak African states and steer them away from Communist influence. It thus favoured Franceʼs exclusive approach.64 However, contrary to what has been argued by Berny Sèbe, it did arouse the interest of smaller independent US companies (and later, also that of majors). 65 This situation was also looked on favourably by Molletʼs government, as we will see below. The Suez expedition was a key point in the development of Algerian resources. The lack of oil subsequent to the ensuing Arab embargo convinced French authorities that an autarky policy with respect to Algeria would delay a thorough exploration of that territory, with possible fatal consequences for Franceʼs energy security. Thus, when the French eventually chose to open the doors of the Sahara to the Americans, they did not do it wholeheartedly. In fact they were forced to that by economic interests and technological reasons. US companies were only too happy to oblige. This was particularly the case of smaller, independent, American oil and service companies, mainly providing the geophysical expertise that was essential in the exploration of the Algerian subsoil. Collecting geoscientific intelligence Contrary to the majors, US independent oil companies did not dispose of the massive international reserves that the majors owned. In order to elbow a place for themselves in the oil market, they were therefore more prone to venture into financially risky business, and in the event of a discovery, 15
to commit their expertise and capital to finding and extracting as much oil as possible, in collaboration with the French authorities. There was little risk that they might aim to acquire reserves in order not to extract them – as some majors did – thus artificially stimulating a rise in oil prices and subtract reserves from competitors (a strategy called ʻscarcity productionʼ by historian Timothy Mitchell).66 In addition, these companies, lacking activities in the Métropole, had less retaliation power over the French than the majors. Independent companies seemed disposed to accept BRPʼs rules for accessing the Sahara, namely that no foreign group should hold the majority of any concession; that they commit to supply and train technicians and provide drilling equipment; that they relinquish half of their permits after five years; and finally and most importantly, that they transmit to the BRP all geoscientific data collected. For the BRP, the last provision in particular meant gathering intelligence at no cost, while the training of French specialists by the Americans would improve the quality of national geoscientific expertise. Thus, in July 1957, the US Cities Service Company informed the State Department it was about to agree to an exploration contract with REPAL for some areas close to the Libyan border. 67 BRPʼ President, Guillaumat, declared that his agency would start an open door policy in the Sahara, and grant permits for 60,000 km2 within the following four months. At least five companies applied for permits, two of which included American interests.68 The US Minister Counsellor in Paris, Charles Yost, talked with agents of Phillips Petroleum, Tide Water, Sun Oil, Conorada and Continental. In the following months, more US companies applied for permits, always in co-participation with French concerns: this was the case for Sinclair Oil, Newmont Mining, and Phillips Petroleum.69 By that time, American companies were not new to Saharan exploratory activities: Overseas had ex plored western Sahara; the two seismic companies, Independent and Rogers, had been working for French companies in the Hassi RʼMel area and south of Reggane. In addition, between ten and twelve American technicians and engineers were working independently for French companies engaged in drilling activities, and more were expected to enter Algeria in early 1958 as contractors. 70 However, while the activities of small US companies were sponsored by the French, some could now be playing a role as ʻdouble agentsʼ. The fluidity of transnational actors could therefore materialize as an asset for the US oil industry and administration. The sensitive information some company representatives collected in their visits was sent back to the State Department and used to put forward more requests to prospect certain areas. This was typ16
ical of the scientific intelligence gathering for national and business purposes conducted by oil companies and technology contractors.71 In May 1957, for example, an American representative working for a lubricant firm travelled to Hassi Messaoud to estimate first-hand the likelihood of the well sʼ productive potential as reported by the French, subsequently downplaying the scope of the discovery. Later on, an American engineer was called by the French Compagnie française des petroles (Algérie) (CFP(A)) to supervise the production of one of Hassi Messaoudʼs wells; meanwhile, another US technician surveyed the Hassi RʼMel area, and reported back about its structure. 72 In mid-1958, the American production superintendent of the CFP(A) confidentially reported to the State Department that tests on one of Hassi Messaoudʼs wells had proved deceptive, and that reports leaked to the press about the well being a potentially huge producer had proved “extremely embarrassing for the management of the company”.73 He then provided more realistic quantitative estimates. Once again geoscientific knowledge had proved to have unsuspected strategic qualities. “These facts”, commented US Consul General in Algiers, Frederick Lyon, “are very closely guarded secrets. No information of this type is available officially and such facts as the Consulate General had obtained come privately and principally from the source mentioned”. 74 Information of this kind was fundamental for the US government to assess the Algerian Saharaʼs real oil potential. Thanks to the Consulateʼs reports, the State Department was able to transmit data to US companies. Most would consult such information before engaging in negotiations with French authorities. By June 1958, British and American geoscientific information-gathering activities had considerably increased. Fifteen geophysical crews were working in the Sahara. While six were from the French CGG, three were from Shell-controlled CPA; one, contracted by CGG, was from the American seismic prospecting company MacCollum Exploration; and four other American-controlled seismic reflection crews from Independent and Rogers were working in several areas of the Sahara. Moreover, the Americans could count on their technological superiority in oil equipment as a lever to blackmail the French and obtain the results they desired. A secret SDECE report to Fuels Directorate reveals that in December 1957 British oil representatives met officers from the US Chase Bank (SONJʼs reference bank). At the meeting, the former let the latter know of their anxieties over Saharan projects developing without adequate British presence. Such concern was shared by the Americans who, in order to mollify the French, declared themselves willing to blackmail the latter by blocking exports of prospecting and drilling materials in case the Standard Oil group were not allowed to take part in Saharan exploration.75 British Petroleum was eventually admitted to the Sahara exploration in the summer of 1958 through a minority participation in the Société des pétroles de 17
Valence.76 Disregarding whether the technological blackmail was eventually implemented, this episode shows once more how technological disparity allowed decisive leverage in oil diplomacy affairs. A major change: the promulgation of the Oil Code and SONJʼs admission to the Sahara US companiesʼ activities in Algeria were not limited to the collection of confidential geoscientific information, but once such information was acquired, it was employed in requests for concessions. In December 1957 Arthur Proudfit, a SONJ manager, informed the State Department of his intention to travel to Paris to confer with the French ʻMinister of Minesʼ (as no such ministry existed in France, he presumably meant the Fuels Director, Blancard). In January, he and another SONJ representative met Blancard and CFPʼs President, Victor de Metz, to renegotiate Algerian concessions.77 The negotiations continued unabated notwithstanding the turmoil caused by the French Air Forceʼs strike, on 8 February 1958, against the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef. While the French military asserted their objective was to destroy an FLN stronghold, the attack caused over seventy civilian casualties. Not only did it definitively reduce to nil US government hopes that France could solve the Algerian issue, but it also triggered a move at the UN by the Tunisian envoy, who presented the assembly with a motion of condemnation for France. Relations between the French and American governments were strained, especially as the Americans knew that military equipment sent to France from the US for NATO purposes had been used in the raid. In order to avoid a difficult debate at the UN Security Council, one which would force the United States to take a definite position in the conflict, the American government suggested to the French and the Tunisians a joint Anglo-American good offices mission to broker peace between France and Tunisia. The two governments accepted.78 At the same time, the majority of UN countries agreed to back the Tunisian proposal. When in April the French Assembly rejected Prime Minister Félix Gaillardʼs request to accept the missionʼs suggestions, the government fell, marking a crucial step in the crumbling of the Fourth Republic. The final blow came in May, when French settlers assaulted the General Government in Algiers during a demonstration in support of French Algeria. The fear in France of a military coup in Algeria carried out by the Algerian generals convinced the French government, now led by the Christian Democrat, Pierre Pflimlin, to accept the only solution that would ward off this possibility. 18
This was the return to power of the only authority the Algerian military would respect: General Charles de Gaulle, who had left power in early 1946. The General formed the last of the Fourth Republicʼs cabinets in June, and in January 1959 became the first President of the Fifth Republic, which replaced the parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system. 79 While the Fourth Republic was disintegrating under the actions of the Algerian military, the FLN took advantage of the extreme instability of the French political situation. In April, FLNʼs New York delegation published a report on Saharan oil, which attributed the French obstinacy in not relinquishing the region to the that governmentʼs determination to exploit Algerian hydrocarbons for its own benefit.80 The French secret services learned that the FLN had also secretly contacted foreign oil companies and reassured them that an independent Algeria would seek their collaboration and recognize their legitimate interests in exchange for their help. The Front, however, clarified that only an independent Algerian government could have the right to sanction such agreements, and that Algeria would not recognize any accords or commitments taken by those companies with the French.81 French intelligence agents speculated that this was FLNʼs response to SONJ-BRP-CFP negotiations. Now that the French government had decided to look for a settlement with the American major, the FLN decided to raise its bid, and offer full collaboration to the Americans. At the same time, in October 1956 the FLN announced a general offensive and the opening of a new ʻSaharan frontʼ.82 In November 1957 a team of CPA prospectors was attacked, and some were killed. The FLN also threatened to sabotage pipelines laid by the French in Algeria. In January 1959 it led a successful attack on a pipeline; as a consequence, an inter-ministerial committee including then-Prime Minister, Michel Debré, members of the secret services, and Guillaumat – now Minister of Armed Forces – designed a plan to protect oil installations. 83 Oil companies also contributed to the military protection of their facilities; however, at the same time the French Delegate General in Algiers arranged for companies to pay the FLN for ʻprotectionʼ .84 Probably because of these countermeasures, together with the fact that the FLN leaders may have realized that a strategy aimed at disrupting activities of the oil industry would ultimately be detrimental to the Algeriaʼs future prospects, sabotaging activities were not a major issue during the war, and foreign companies continued to apply for permits.85 In the summer of 1958 the number of American independent companies in association with French counterparts had increased. The American Consulate in Algiers now counted twelve foreign-French associations involved in the development of Saharan resources.86 19
In order to promote the intervention of foreign companies in Algeria and significantly relieve a French budget vexed by both war and exploration costs, in November 1958 de Gaulleʼs government approved a fundamental, long-awaited law that would regulate oil activities in the Sahara: the Saharan Oil Code. The Code provided companies with greater freedom to act than the previous exploration and production rules. An advantageous fiscal regime was created, as well as new provisions on exploration, including a prospecting authorization allowing companies to start their field operations.87 This was a pragmatic step to take before seeking a permit, enabling companies to accumulate data about a territory before deciding whether to make any further investment. All data, needless to say, had to be transmitted to the BRP, which could therefore even compare results from different companies on the same area, and assess the technological advances of foreign enterprises. The Code thus aligned with Guillaumatʼs strategy of giving away specific exploitation rights while retaining control of geoscientific knowledge.88 The promulgation of the Oil Code, together with a symbolic visit that De Gaulle made to an Algerian oilfield a month later gave impetus to the Saharan oil boom, which was further stimulated by a press announcement of a cooperative agreement among SONJ, CFP and Pétropar, a government-controlled investment company. The agreement, formalized in January 1959, gave the association exploration rights over an area of 20,000 km 2 in the Eastern Dune, bordering Libya.89 The deal was immediately denounced by Mohamed Yazid, in his new role as Minister of Information of the FLNʼs government-in-exile, the Gouvernement provisoire de la République algérienne (Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic, GPRA), established in Cairo four months earlier.90 Yazid declared French-foreign agreements invalid and, to make his point stronger, he continued his lobbying activity at the State Department and the UN, prompting vocal protests by the French Ambassador in Washington.91 The US government, however, did not stop the Algerian. 92 American oil companies had been admitted to the Sahara and were developing their business presence; not least, with FLNʼs increasing power, frustrating Yazidʼs activities in the US would be counterproductive. Such incident notwithstanding, French-American relations in North African oil gradually and constantly improved, so that by the end of 1960, out of thirty foreign companies operating in the Algerian Sahara, most were American, and included the majors Socony Mobil, Caltex and SONJ. 93 The FLN and its diplomats did not limit themselves to lobbying politicians and UN representatives 20
in the United States. They also directed their attention to European governments and oil companies, with the Italian public oil company, ENI, playing an important role in working with both the French and the FLN with a view to establishing a foothold in Saharan exploration. An Italian ʻbusiness cardʼ to the Sahara In October 1957, in a telegram sent from Pietro Quaroni, Italian Ambassador in Paris, to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giuseppe Pella, Quaroni argued that Italy should “present [its] business card to the Sahara”.94 Toward the end of 1957, the idea of carving out a space in Algeria by taking advantage of the new French Saharan policy also began to take hold in Italian diplomatic circles. Quaroni criticized the dithering of the Italian government, which he believed was abstaining from taking initiative in the hope more profit would come from a deal with the Algerians (assuming that they would soon be independent). This stance, Quaroni warned, could prove dramatically wrong. It seemed unlikely to him that oil concessions given to private concerns would be cancelled after the French departure.95 Thus Quaroni implicitly solicited ENIʼs intervention, especially since by late 1957 the Italian company was in extremely good relations with Middle East Arab oil producers. In that year, the Italian firm enacted a new system of approach to profit-sharing that threatened the majorsʼ oligopolistic control of oil from that area. ENIʼs two contracts with Iran and Egypt substantially modified the 5050 division of profits in use at the time. Simplifying an otherwise more complex issue, the Italian-Iranian agreement attributed 75 percent of profits to the producer, the other 25 percent to ENI. This was an important change as producers could eventually become directly involved in the oil industry proper, train their technicians in Western techniques, and to some extent develop their own technical apparatus, while also gathering geoscientific data. 96 The new contract model caused much anxiety among the majors, and it is interesting to notice that from the second half of the 1950s, ENIʼs geophysicists played an important negotiating role in perfecting these deals. Antonio Selem, the chief geophysicist of ENIʼs exploration branch, AGIP Mineraria, was instrumental as the companyʼs ʻtravelling ambassadorʼ. ENIʼs first president, and one of Italyʼs most powerful figures of his time, Enrico Mattei, had him secretly negotiate in countries where his own presence would have aroused suspicion, thus keeping a low profile for ENIʼs operations.97 Quaroni and Mattei agreed that the French would soon be forced to leave Algeria. The Ambassador 21
was furthermore convinced that a clearly pro-Arab policy would strengthen Italyʼs relations with the US. Italian support for Arab states would balance the negative effects of French actions in North Africa (but only as long as the Italians did not challenge American oil interests). 98 Already in April 1956, ENIʼs newspaper Il Giorno had published an article on a solution for the Algerian crisis based on the acknowledgment of the FLN as a valid interlocutor – exactly what the French abhorred.99 Then, a year later, Il Giorno disputed the validity of French concessions over Saharan natural resources.100 French diplomats were convinced Il Giornoʼs (and therefore Matteiʼs) viewpoint coincided with that of the Italian government, believing that with ENIʼs financial resources Mattei could influence parliamentary decisions.101 They also believed an unfavourable attitude from the Italian government on Algeria weakened the French position at the UN. 102 As in the case of the US administration, the Italian government openly supported its European ally, while covertly adopting a laissez faire policy vis-à-vis ENIʼs actions in North Africa. Italyʼs Mediterranean aspirations, the French Ambassador in Italy, Jacques Fouques-Duparc wrote in September 1957 to his Foreign Minister, Christian Pineau, were not limited to providing the country with the most convenient energy resources, but extended to making Italy the champion of Afro-Arab nationalism.103 However, the French hoped to co-opt Mattei and ENI’s interests in the Sahara. In November 1957, Italian Social-Democrat leader and former Deputy Prime Minister, Giuseppe Saragat, suggested that the new French Ambassador in Rome, Gaston Palewski, approach Mattei with a view to examining how to cooperate in Saharan exploration. Palewski did not reject the suggestion outright; he wrote to Pineau to ask for his opinion, leaving the possibility open. 104 But Mattei thought it convenient to approach the Algerian nationalists instead. The first contacts with the FLN occurred in 1958, when ENIʼs President met the FLN representative in Rome, Taïeb Boulahrouf..105 The Italian ʻNeo-Atlanticistʼ political doctrine – the ambition to develop a specific role for Italy in developing countries while keeping an Atlantic allegiance and protecting national interests – sought to align the countryʼs need for energy sources with a growing industrial network. 106 On the diplomatic side, it was easy for Italian administrations to support the cause of anti-colonialism, opportunistically embraced after the Treaty of Paris, in February 1947, had obliged Italy to renounce its colonies. 107 Besides making contacts with the Italians, the FLN (and later the GPRA) approached other countries for help. Since the US military supported the French behind the NATO banner, they requested assistance from China and the Soviet Union. The Soviets, in particular, provided the FLN with 22
weapons via Czechoslovakia and Egypt.108 In 1961, an agreement was signed between the USSR and the GPRA. Among other provisions, it included a commitment that half of Algerian foreign trade be exchanged with the Soviet Bloc. Algeria would also close down French military bases within a year so as to prevent them being available to NATO. 109 The Americans had seemed uncertain to the GPRA, their support having been lukewarm. Approaching the Soviets may also have been a move designed to convince the United States to assume a more definite pro-Algerian stance. On the contrary, in the case of the Italian public oil company, there was no ambiguity in its friendly stance towards the GPRA. It was Abdelhafid Boussouf, the GPRA Minister of Armaments and General Relations and Communications, who understood Matteiʼs aspirations to carve out a prominent position for ENI in the Sahara. Early approaches to the French and the Algerians In July 1958, Mattei gained ENI an exploration permit in southern Morocco, contextually snapping it up from SONJ, which had shown interest in it,and taking his personal revenge over an analogous move made by SONJ in Libya in 1957. Based on the Iranian template for profit-sharing, the Moroccan-Italian agreement was a clear sign of ENIʼs assertiveness toward the economic position of the majors. In addition, the choice of Morocco, up to then virtually a private French ground, also hinted at Matteiʼs inclination to not accept French collaboration proposals on joint exploitation of the Sahara. Expectedly, the French protested.110 Boussouf also appreciated Matteiʼs initiative and ENIʼs different policy regarding profit-sharing with producing countries, so he encouraged the ENI President in this sense by sponsoring the allotment of a concession to the Italian company in Libya, to which in late 1959 the Libyan King, Idriss I consented despite external pressures. 111 Thankful for such support, Mattei did his best to promote the Algerian cause within the Italian political environment. Italy soon became the European country where the FLN enjoyed the largest operational support for its political and diplomatic aspirations. 112 That did not mean that Mattei was committed to not dealing with the French, as has generally been maintained.113 Mattei carefully examined the French requirements for collaboration in Algerian oil activities (mainly, in oil production), but found them unsatisfactory. According to French diplomatic sources, Mattei had approached CFP and had shown an interest in being associated with the exploitation of Hassi Messaoud. The French company had rejected his proposal, however, while Mattei had refused CFPʼs counterproposal.114 Apparently, Mattei also approached the small French Compagnie dʼexploitation pétrolière (CEP) in early 1957 – which entered the Sahara that year – aiming 23
for a joint exploration of CEPʼs Saharan permits next to the area of Edjeleh.115 In January 1957 CEP was ready to sign an agreement with ENI. The French company would be the sole owner of mining rights, and ENI would participate in the associationʼs capital up to a maximum of 30 percent.116 Mattei delegated the task of discussing the proposal to ENIʼs Foreign Relations Department, but in the end the company never even responded to the French offer. “E.N.I. did not even reply”, the Cabinet of the Foreign Ministry complained later that year. 117 Mattei also met Guillaumat in Paris in May 1957 to the same purpose, but the talks led nowhere. 118 ENIʼs scarce enthusiasm in dealing with the French was possibly once more due to the strictness of association conditions, especially in comparison to the opportunities of 75-25 profit-sharing contracts with producers. In November 1958, during a stopover in Warsaw, the ENI President met the French Ambassador, Étienne Burin des Rosiers, with a view to a possible collaboration between France, Italy and the Arab-Saharan countries. Matteiʼs proposal was to preserve French predominance in the Sahara, but without direct French political authority over the desert. He proposed a re partition of French Saharaʼs resources among the two European countries and the relevant Arab countries.119 However, the Italian plan assumed that de Gaulle would recognize the GPRA as the legitimate government, which the General would not. The proposal was shelved. 120 By the end of the decade, the FLN increased its network of contacts in Italy. 121 Thanks to Matteiʼs mediation, and with a view to de Gaulleʼs visit to Italy in June 1959, the FLN representative in Rome, Boulahrouf, met with Italian President, Giovanni Gronchi, to whom he described the Algerian situation and suggested he survey his French counterpart about the possibility of negotiations with the FLN.122 In the summer of 1960, ENI executives and Moroccan high officials laid the foundation stone of a refinery, whose building licence had been given to ENI in spite of vocal French protests. By then, ENI had also constituted an Italian-Tunisian company and obtained an exploration permit in the former French protectorate. Mattei used the leverage acquired by ENIʼs success in Morocco to propose a gentlemenʼs agreement to the French through an unofficial ENI representative.123 The French ambassador in Rabat, Alexandre Parodi, expressed his concern to Wormser about what Mattei now wished to do. ENI, he explained, intended to mediate relations between France, on one side, and Tunisia, Morocco and the FLN on the other. 124 By extending activities to Algeriaʼs neighbours, and by weaving links with the Front, a secret SDECE report revealed, Mattei sought to open the Saharan oil and gas fields to the Italians. 125 In June Blancard, who after leaving the Fuels Directorate in 1959 had returned to BRPʼs presidency, 24
urged the French Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, to plan countermeasures to ENIʼs activism, and suggested retaliating by expanding French gas interests in Italy.126 It was a critical moment for the French in Algeria: they had agreed to start negotiations with the FLN, and the last thing they wanted was to see an ally of the Algerian nationalists with vested interests in replacing the French, acting as a mediator between them and their former North African possessions. Accepting US companies had been enough to acquire the American governmentʼs support for a French Algeria and adequately ʻput the desert into productionʼ. Italy, on the other hand, could not offer similar rewards. The secret battle fought between French and Italian oil agencies and diplomacies for the con trol of Saharan resources only escalated due to the establishment of ENIʼs own diplomacy in North Africa. ENIʼs underground diplomacy and the Sahara problem By early 1960, French authorities had good reason to be suspicious of ENIʼs manoeuvres. The company had consolidated its relations with the GPRA. ENI employed journalist and former intelligence agent, Italo Pietra, as a liaison officer in Algeria. Later on, in the summer of 1961, ENI set up its own quasi-diplomatic structure. Journalist Mario Pirani was sent as a covert ʻENI ambassador’ to Tunis, where the GPRA had its new headquarters. Pirani was to assist the GPRA and help it plan future energy scenarios for Algeria. The French services were immediately notified of his appointment by the British services.127 Another important element of ENIʼs hidden diplomacy was the Turkish citizen, Arslan Humbaraci. Connected to FLNʼs most radical wing, he served as an intermediary between the GPRA and ENI; yet his indirect connection to the Italian company obscured his overlapping interests with its officials. ENIʼs diplomatic activities were sufficiently developed that, at a meeting at the International Affairs Institute in 1967, Quaroni maintained that “for years, real Italian foreign policy has been carried out by Enrico Mattei”. 128 ENI supported the Algerian fighters in various ways. At a meeting among representatives of the main Algerian trade union, the Italian Communist Party, and Mattei, the latter offered financial aid in exchange for their collaboration with his company.129 According to a secret SDECE note, Mattei offered a hundred million francs to the GPRA if it held out against French demands in the Sahara. 130 Although no reliable proof of this has been advanced, ENI certainly subsidized the publication of Algeria, a magazine by the Italian Commission advocating for peace in Algeria, and proposed supplying fuel to FLNʼs armed wing. The Algerians refused, Pirani maintains, as they had already agreed deals with SONJ and Shell.131 It has also been claimed that ENI helped the Algerians educate 25
their future oil industryʼs cadres through scholarships at its Scuola superiore di studi sugli idrocarburi.132 In in June 1960 Krim Belkacem, GPRAʼs Foreign Minister, thanked Mattei “for the moral and material help” given to the FLN. 133 On 8 January 1961 the Algerian population accepted, through a referendum, a process toward selfdetermination proposed by de Gaulle. In May, French-Algerian peace negotiations started in the French town of Évian. A month before the meeting, Bernard Tricot, one of the main authors of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, sent the head of the French delegation and Minister for Algerian Affairs, Louis Joxe, a document outlining the governmental position on the Sahara. Tricot listed the following main objectives: 1) not being expelled from the desert; 2) keeping the possibility of testing nuclear weapons there; 3) continuing paying for oil products in francs; and finally, 4) opening of Saharan extraction and transport industry outlets to French expertise and materials. 134 As for the administration of the Saharan provinces, what the French suggested was to limit the selfdetermination referendum to Northern Algeria, while internationalizing the Sahara (de facto leaving it under the influence of France). Unsurprisingly, the Algerians opposed the French position on the Sahara, and defended the claim that the Sahara was and ought to remain Algerian. On this and on another point regarding citizenship for French settlers in an independent country, the talks stalled, and were suspended in mid-June.135 French-Algerian negotiations were resumed several times during 1961-62, openly and secretly, in Switzerland and France, but the problem of Saharan sovereignty persisted.136 With a view to the reopening of negotiations in 1962, ENIʼs Studies Service covertly aided the Algerians in devising a possible treaty with France about the exploitation of Saharan resources.137 In practice, affirmed Pirani, all articles about the future of Saharan oil were studied by ENI technicians together with the Algerians. At the peace negotiations, the delegation led by Belkacem used documentation prepared by ENI to suggest the kind of organization to be given to the sector and the guarantees to demand. 138 Colluding underground with the Algerians, ENI also gave geoscientific intelligence on the Saharan subsoil. Mohamed Khelladi, Director of Communication and Research at the GPRAʼs Ministry of Armament and General Relations, could consult complete ENI documentation including the detailed text of provisions regulating the oil sector, as well as copies of contracts, concession acts, tables and indexes of prices, and files with data of every single company operating in the Sahara.139In order to collect and coordinate all this information, the GPRA set up a petroleum commission led by Claude Cixous, an aeronautical engineer who had been working at the Oil Code. The 26
Algeriansʼ knowledge of Saharan operations details, and their firmness on the legal framework in which the oil sector should be established, caught the French unprepared. 140 Our knowledge on the technical support provided by ENI to the Algerians has up to now been mainly based on witnesses accounts.141 A tenuous trace of the existence of ENI documents used at Évian can be found in its archives, namely a folder entitled Documents prepared for G.P.R.A. with view to Évian. Either the title of the folder is misleading or its content has been removed since it only contains documents produced after the Évian agreements had been signed.142 Moreover, ENI was in possession of the extensive report written by geologist Myron Kozáry on prospects in the Algerian Sahara.143 i We also know that in November 1960 three geologists from AGIP Mineraria, led by Carmine Loddo, visited the Hassi Messaoud oilfield, to which they had been invited by Claude de Lapparent, CFP(A)ʼs Exploration Director, in order to learn about the techniques and the most important results obtained by the French company. The visit had been facilitated by Roberto Passega, at the same time an Agip and CFP(A) consultant for sedimentology. The three French technicians chosen to attend the Italian delegation, Henri Vautrin, Robert Wetzel and Willy Bruderer, the latter a pioneer of Algerian geological exploration, were among the highest persons in charge of the policies adopted by the company in oil prospecting both in France and abroad. During talks with Bruderer in Paris, where the visit had started, Loddo had the chance to go through the geological documentation regarding Algeria, especially Hassi Messaoud. The French geologists were also “very liberal” in revealing to the Italians works completed and in progress, but unwilling to hand over any documents such as maps, seismic sections and profiles, or electrical well logs. 144 The Loddo report contained details about the history of oil exploration in the Sahara, geological characteristics of the area of Hassi Messaoud, techniques used for prospecting, production, estimates of reserves, and details on organization of the exploration department. A similar report was also prepared for the gas field of Hassi RʼMel.145 The French geophysicists allowed ENI technicians to visit the oil and gas fields because of the links the Italian company developed in the exploration sector. CGG and the Schlumberger Company, Franceʼs geophysical flagships, worked in Italy through and beyond, the 1950s and on several occasions CGG offered its services to ENI.146The French governmentʼs annoyance toward Mattei during the Algerian War also derived from this knowledge that French experts had assisted the Italians for many years, especially as regard to Mattei’s role in passing intelligence to the Algerians during their frequent contacts with ENI managers. 27
The Évian Agreements, and Matteiʼs threat defused Two months after the May 1961 negotiations, Mattei was invited by the BRP to be part of a pool of British, American and French oil companies, but he declined the offer, which the French services explained by his having concluded a secret agreement with the GPRA. The same explanation was used once French-Algerian peace talks were resumed at Lugrin in south-eastern France. It appeared that in May a contract had been signed between an Austrian company – serving as a cover for ENI and the Union of Swiss Banks – and the GPRA. Reportedly the accord regulated prospecting and refining activities in an independent Algeria, and was analogous to the one signed between ENI and Morocco.147 However, according to the US Ambassador in Rome, George Frederick Reinhardt, “[W]hen [Mattei] gave evidence of attempting to develop special relationships with the FLN with a view to obtaining special concessions in Algeria after the liberation, the Government […] forced him to back down”.148 These developments coincided with a crisis in Tunisian-French relations. On 19 July 1961, serious incidents occurred near the French military base of Bizerte, in Tunisia, the evacuation of which Tunisian President, Habib Bourguiba, had long requested. While the clash ended up in a military defeat for the Tunisians, Bourguiba succeeded in reaching a settlement scheduling the withdrawal of French troops. However, the clash meant that all French hopes of internationalizing Saharan resources by involving Algeriaʼs neighbours were now compromised. The mounting costs of the French military commitment in North Africa also affected the funding of ambitious French nuclear projects. Diplomatically isolated, with newly-independent African countries ganging up against it at the UN, and confronted with waning US support, France capitulated.149 In September 1961 de Gaulle yielded on Algerian sovereignty over the Sahara, on the condition that French interests be safeguarded. The French government, argues historian Jacques Frémeaux, made a realist decision: it reckoned that the benefits would be marginal from controlling accruing from Saharan oil, considering its higher cost compared to Middle Eastern and Libyan oil, and its lesser adaptability to the characteristics of the French market. In addition, profits going to France in the form of taxes were significantly less than the investments made by France to improve the life standard of Algerian population. In short, it would be much wiser for French finances to let Algeria go. 150 This decision was eventually sanctioned in March, through the Évian Agreements. The Sahara was to be included in Algeria, while the Algerians committed to respecting the rights acquired by French 28
companies and the Oil Code. The GPRA sanctioned French rights in prospecting activities over a surface of 700,000 km2, and kept Algeria within the franc zone. A French-Algerian agency was created, as suggested by ENI, to manage the hydrocarbons sector. On the military sphere, the base of Mers-el-Kébir was rented for fifteen years to France, and the use of Saharan facilities for nuclear tests was conceded for five years. Most importantly, French companies were to enjoy a priority for six years in distribution activities and in the allotment of exploration permits on unexplored areas, but only in the event that other companies offered conditions equivalent to the French ones. In effect, the Évian Agreements created a veritable cordon sanitaire around the hydrocarbon sector.151 Some authors have argued that the specification about equivalent conditions was an ingenuous stratagem devised by ENIʼs technicians in order to get access to Algerian oil-rich areas by simply proposing Iran-like contracts, more advantageous to Algeria than the usual 50-50 contracts. But if that was the idea, then it met with failure. On 27 October 1962, coinciding with the climax of the Cuban missile crisis, Mattei died unexpectedly in a plane crash, with speculation it may have been the result of deliberate sabotage. In 2003, an Italian court concluded the crash resulted from an attack carried out by someone whose identity was not possible to trace. After leaving SDECE, Thyraud de Vosjoli, the servicesʼ representative in Washington, claimed that his agencyʼs secret armed wing, known as the Main Rouge (ʻRed Handʼ), assassinated Mattei. Intelligence officials not surprisingly dismissed his claim.152 We know that in early November, Mattei was due to fly to Algiers where he would sign an oil agreement with Ben Bella. It was probably a contract for oil extraction and transport equipment, or for the construction of a refinery. 153 The Italian tycoonʼs antagonizing policy was discontinued by his successor. Matteiʼs death brought these plans to an end. On 27 October 1962, coinciding with the climax of the Cuban missile crisis, a plane crash, the causes of which have been widely speculated about over the last five decades, put an end to Matteiʼs life. In 2003, an Italian court concluded the crash resulted from an attack carried out by someone whose identity was not possible to trace. After leaving SDECE, Thyraud de Vosjoli, the servicesʼ representative in Washington, claimed that his agencyʼs secret armed wing, known as the Main Rouge (‘Red Handʼ), assassinated Mattei. Intelligence officials not surprisingly dismissed his claim.154 During the first years of his presidency, Matteiʼs de facto successor at the head of ENI, Eugenio Cefis, followed a quite different policy, mainly for financial reasons. ENIʼs entry into oil prospecting activities in Algeria was indefinitely frozen, and Cefis instructed that ENI focus on activities already operative. Projects in an embryonic state – for instance, in sub-Saharan Africa – were interrupted. Yet relations with the Algerians were never com29
pletely cut off. ENIʼs interest gradually moved from oil to gas, and in the early 1970s the Italians would reach an agreement with Algeria on natural gas supplies: a collaboration that is still ongoing. Conclusion During the Algerian war of independence, the Sahara was not only the setting for military events between the French and the Algerians. A secret war was fought in the hydrocarbon sector too, involving French and foreign governmental institutions, intelligence services, and oil agencies and companies. At the heart of the struggle was scientific and technological knowledge that enabled new approaches to prospecting and exploiting the Sahara. I have shown that such knowledge was critical to the development of the Algerian oil scenario, and it even contributed to affect the outcome of the war and Algeria’s foreign relations post-independence. Data collected in confidential reports and memoranda by technicians from geoscientific contracting firms and by diplomats played a critical role. As did the complex networks in which such data was transmitted and used politically. The critical dynamic was the tension among countries, agencies, and oil companies that were formally allied with France, but which harboured serious doubts over French war policies and had interests in expanding their economic and strategic interests to North Africa. In this process, scientific and technical knowledge allowed the various actors to assess developments in Saharan oil prospecting and operations, utilizing such information to devise adequate strategies for their own national interests and those of their oil companies. Such intelligence gathering was particularly useful to the US in an early phase of exploration of the Sahara, when US companies were not yet operating in the Sahara. As Algeria pre-independence was formally French territory, foreign oil companies needed French authorization to access that area. Foreign presence in Algeria was anathema to French administrations, as the desert had just started bearing its fruits after decades of exploratory works, providing potentially vital revenue for the French state still recovering from World War II. It is in this respect that US geophysical contractors played a fundamental role, as their technical expertise proved vital to French companies in surveying the Sahara. France had its own expertise, but it was not sufficient to match French ambitions, which required more exploratory crews than France had available. Without the presence of US geoscientific providers in Algeria, the State Department, let alone US majors, may have never been able to fully understand the potential of the desert. In reverse, the hiring of US technical experts by French companies allowed the French government some measure of insight into the interests of US oil companies in Saharan riches, as well as about the influence these 30
companies enjoyed in American diplomatic environments and of broader, alleged interest of the US government in replacing France in North Africa. However, in a second phase of the war starting about 1957, French institutions had to face the simple consideration that if they wanted their country to become energy-autonomous in a relatively short time and adequately exploit Saharan resources, they would have to resort to foreign capital. This was reflected in the establishment of first the OCRS first and then the promulgation of the Oil Code. These two changes led to the admission of a number of foreign companies to oil exploration and production activities: initially, American independent companies, and later also international majors and Western European firms. At the same time, the new regulations provided the BRP with a large amount of data about the Algerian subsurface, and helped French oil technicians improve their knowledge of prospecting methods by obliging foreign firms to train French geophysicists in the new techniques. The strategy gradually adopted by the French, mainly devised by Guillaumat and other personalities at the head of the French oil industry, allowed foreign enterprises into Algeria, but under restrictive conditions, which ensured that the French BRP continued to retain control of geoscientific information and have a stake in the results of these operations. The Algerians challenged French exploitation plans, forging a range of alliances that shared an interest in undermining French influence over the Sahara. A critical aspect of this was the multiple ef forts develop geostrategic knowledge and usie it in ways to undermine the ability of French administrations to exercise primary control over Saharan resources. ENI was a major player in this new game. While dealing with French authorities and trying to persuade them to set up mixed companies that would also involve North African countries, Mattei aligned with the FLN, hoping to bypass the French once Algeria became independent. ENI established a parallel diplomacy to deal with the Algerian nationalists and support them in various ways. Geoscientific and organizational knowledge transferred from ENI to the GPRA reveals the import of such knowledge in these secret negotiations, which often went against official policy positions. The links kept by the Americans and Italians with the Algerian fighters and the GPRA not only allowed the Algerians to count on moral and material aid for anti-French purposes, but also to defend on sound grounds the idea of the Sahara as an integral part of Algeria and to plan the establishment of post-independence oil resources management. Ultimately the intertwining of oil exploration, diplomacy and security I have revealed in this study adds a new dimension to historical understanding 31
about the use of the geosciences in geopolitics. The search for raw materials exemplified in this case illuminates the role and modes of circulation of knowledge during the Cold War and, more specifically, how the acquisition, possession and selective distribution of geoscientific intelligence informed international power dynamics.
32
Acknowledgment This work was supported by the European Research Council under Grant nr. R111410. Thanks to Simone Turchetti, Jeff Hughes, Matthew Adamson, Martin Collins, and two anonymous referees for the valuable suggestions and comments provided. Thanks also to the staff of British, French, Italian, and US archives, who helped me in my research. References Archival Sources Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, La Courneuve (ADMAE) Archives Historiques du Groupe Total, Puteaux (AHTOTAL) Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (AN) Archives Nationales dʼOutre-mer, Aix-en-Provence (ANOM) Archivio Storico ENI, Pomezia (Roma) (ASENI) Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Roma (ASMAE) Archivio Tecnico-Scientifico ENI, San Donato Milanese National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland The National Archives, Kew (TNA)
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Mondadori, 2004. Malek, Redha. LʼAlgérie à Évian. Histoire des négociations secrètes, 1956-1962. Paris: Seuil. 1995. Malti, Hocine. Histoire secrète du pétrole algérien. Paris: La Découverte, 2010. Melby, Eric D. K. Oil and the International System. The Case of France, 1918-1969. New York: Arno Press, 1981. Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. New York: Verso, 2011. Murat, Daniel. Lʼintervention de lʼÉtat dans le secteur pétrolier en France. Paris: Technip, 1969. Needell, Allan A. Science, Cold War and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the balance of professional ideals. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2000. Nuti, Leopoldo. Gli Stati Uniti e lʼapertura a sinistra. Importanza e limiti della presenza americana in Italia. Bari: Laterza, 1999. Perrodon, Alain. “Historique des recherches pétrolières en Algerie”. In La recherche pétrolière française, edited by Jean Prouvost, 323-40. Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1994. Perrone, Nico. Obiettivo Mattei. Petrolio, Stati Uniti e politica dell’ENI. Gamberetti: Roma, 1995. Pirani, Mario. Poteva andare peggio. Mezzo secolo di ragionevoli illusioni. Milano: Mondadori, 2012. Porch, Daniel. The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. Rachline, Maurice. Geophysical Prospecting and Oil Exploration. Paris: CGG/Editions Altlas, 1998. Rioux, Jean-Pierre. La Guerre dʼAlgérie et les Français. Paris: Fayard, 1990. Rioux, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-François Sirinelli. La guerre dʼAlgérie et les intellectuels français. Paris: Institut dʼHistoire du Temps Présent, 1988. Ross, Kristin. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press ,1995. Schlesinger, Arthur. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the While House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. Sèbe, Berny. “In the Shadow of the Algerian War: The United States and the Common Organisation of Saharan Regions (OCRS), 1957–62,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38 (2: 2010): 303-22. Stora, Benjamin. Histoire de la guerre dʼAlgérie (1954-1962). Paris: La Découverte, 1995. Talbott, John. The War Without a Name. France in Algeria, 1954-1962. London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1980. Thénault, Sylvie. Histoire de la guerre dʼindépendance algérienne. Paris: Flammarion, 2005. Thomas, Martin. The French North African Crisis. Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945-62. London: Macmillan, 2000. Tremolada, Ilaria. La via italiana al petrolio. LʼENI di Enrico Mattei e lʼIran (1945-1962). Milano: LʼOrnitorinco, 2011. Vaïsse, Maurice. “France and the Suez Crisis”. In Suez 1956, edited by William Roger Louis and Roger Owen, 131-43. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989. Vaïsse, Maurice. Vers la paix en Algérie. Les négociations d’Évian dans les archives diplomatiques françaises. Bruxelles: Bruylant, 2003. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. Les Crimes de lʼarmée française en Algérie 1954-1962. Paris: La Découverte, 2001. Wall, Irwin M. France, the United States and the Algerian War. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Yates, Douglas A. “Life Stories and Family Histories of the French Oil Industry. The Rise and Fall of the Corps des Mines”. In A Comparative History of National Oil Companies, edited by A. Beltran. Series Enjeux internationaux, 8, 54-67. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2010. Yaqub, Salim. Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Videography “Hocine Malti : Lʼhistoire secrète du pétrole algérien”, YouTube video, 1:02:54, from an interview given to Philippe Robichon (Berbère Télévision), posted by “abuhucem” on 14 July 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGQOi9qDlRw (accessed 11 April 2016).
List of figures: Figure 1 Geophysical activity in Algeria (1952-1965). As the graph shows, geophysical exploratory works increased until 1959, so by the time the war was over in 1962 activities had been decreasing already for a few years.155 Figure 2 Map of the Saharan départements of Oasis and Saoura
1
Bruna Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 155-9; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA) - Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1955-1957, XVIII, Africa, Telegram From Mʼhammed Yazid of the National Liberation Front of Algeria to President Eisenhower, 23 October 1956, p. 246. The four men were: Mohamed Boudiaf, Mohamed Khider, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Ahmed Ben Bella. They were accompanied by FLN sympathiser, Mostefa Lacheraf.
2
NARA - Record Group (RG) 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, box (b.) 4604, folder (f.) 851S.2553/41858, Department of State (DS), Memorandum of Conversation between M. Jean de la Grandville, Counselor, French Embassy, and Mr. Matthew Looram, WE, confidential: “Algeria: Reports re ARAMCO Subsidizing the Algerian rebels”, 18 April 1956. 3 At the time of the Algerian War, seven majors were sharing most of the world oil market. These were (not in order of revenues): British Petroleum (British); Royal Dutch-Shell (British-Dutch); and the five US companies Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony), Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of California, and Texaco. 4 NARA - RG 59, Records of the Office of Western European Affairs, Subject File Relating to France, 1944-60, Lot 61D30, b. 2, f. 16, Algeria-ARAMCO, Memorandum, Robert McBride to Matthew Looram, confidential, 25 February 1957; Matthew Looram to Robert McBride, 27 March 1957. Also in: Sèbe, “In the Shadow,” 313. 5 Kolodziej, French International Policy; Horne, Alistair (1978) A savage war of peace : Algeria 1954-1962. New York: Viking; Talbott, The War Without a Name; Rioux and Sirinelli, La guerre dʼAlgérie; Eveno and Planchais, La guerre dʼAlgérie; Rioux, La Guerre dʼAlgérie et les Français; Kettle, De Gaulle and Algeria; Ageron, La guerre dʼAlgérie et les Algériens; Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies; Stora, Histoire de la guerre dʼAlgérie; Faivre, Les archives inédites; Vidal-Naquet, Les Crimes de lʼarmée française; Harbi and Stora, La Guerre dʼAlgérie;Thénault, Histoire de la guerre. An essential cinematographic work is Gillo Pontecorvoʼs The Battle of Algiers, 1966. 6 El Mechat, Les États-Unis et l’Algérie; Thomas, The French North African Crisis, 113; Wall, France, the United States; Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution; Goldsmith, “The British Embassy”; Vaïsse, Vers la paix en Algérie; Cahn and Miller, La RFA et la guerre d’Algérie; Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria. 7 On this topic, but with reference to uranium, see: Hecht, Being Nuclear. 8 Malti, Histoire secrète du pétrole algérien; Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, Ch. 9 and 10. See also Maltiʼs interview with Berbère Télévision: “Hocine Malti : Lʼhistoire secrète du pétrole algérien”. On oil in diplomatic studies about the war, see: Thomas, The French North African Crisis, 143, 206-7; Wall, France, the United States, 55-6, 237-8; Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 99, 203-4, 262; Sèbe, “In the Shadow”. An important reference on Algerian oil and gas industry after the war is: Abdesselam, Le pétrole et le gaz naturel en Algérie. 9 Doel, “Scientists as Policymakers”; Doel and Needell, “Science, Scientists, and the CIA”; Fleming, “Military Patronage”; Needell, Science, Cold War; Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences”; Krige, American Hegemony; Krige and Barth, “Global Power Knowledge”; Doel, “Does scientific intelligence matter?”. 10 However, the well found at Djebel Berga turned out not to be commercially viable. For a history of oil exploration in Algeria, see: Perrodon, “Historique des recherches pétrolières en Algerie”. 11 Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (AN) - b. 19900317/8, fd. 1, sub-fd. Afrique 1957/77: secret, Note SDECE, Participation des sociétés pétrolières allemandes aux projets sahariens, 24 July 1957; secret, Note SDECE, Algérie-Japon-Italie - Accords pétroliers F.L.N., 22 January 1959; secret, Note SDECE: Algérie-Japon - Le Japon et les accords pétroliers F.L.N., 10 March 1959 (FOIA n° 111 382). 12 For example, see: NARA - RG 59, Subject Numeric Files, 1950-54, French Africa, b. 5006, f. 851S.00/11-1052, Foreign Service Despatch, American Consulate General, Algiers (Amcongen Algiers) (Leon G. Dorros), to DS, Washington, Monthly Economic Report - October 1952, 10 November 1952; The National Archives, Kew (TNA) – Foreign Office (FO) 371/101772, f. WF 1537/1, confidential, Observations on the Fifth Annual Report of the French Bureau of Petroleum Research (BRP) concerning oil prospecting in France and French territories overseas, British Embassy Paris (Sir Oliver Harvey) to Foreign Office (FO) (Anthony Eden), 17 March 1952. 13 Guillaumat had been educated at the prestigious École Polytechnique and had then entered the Corps des mines, the most prominent of the technical Grand Corps of the French State, formed by the State Engineers of the Mines. This educational path, Polytechnique plus Mines (also known as X-Mines), soon came to embody the route to follow for French public high officials aiming at charges of prestige in the administration of energy institutions. The oil industry, in particular, would soon fall under the domination of polytechniciens and corpsards. Yates, “Life Stories”. On concessions made to US majors in France, see: Cantoni and Veneer, “Underwater and Underground”. 14 Archives historiques du Groupe Total, Puteaux (AHTOTAL) - Fonds ELF-ERAP, b. 10AH0832-26, BRP - Minutes of the 29th Meeting of the Board of Directors - 30 October 1951. p. 6-9; b. 07AH0168-6, SN REPAL - Minutes of the 29th Meeting of the Board of Directors - 24 November 1951, p. 16-17; Cantoni and Veneer, “Underwater and Underground”. 15 Differently from what has been argued in Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, 233, up to the Saharan discoveries seismic refraction was not considered a cutting-edge technology. In fact it had been almost completely abandonded in most areas of the world, replaced by seismic reflection. 16 Layat et al., “Some technical aspects”. 17 Layat et al., “Some technical aspects,” 438-9, 442-3. A marker bed is a bed of rock strata that are readily distinguishable by reason of physical characteristics and are traceable over large horizontal distances (Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/365643/marker-bed, accessed 11 April 2016).
18
19 20
Rachline, Geophysical Prospecting; Du Castel et al. Les aventuriers de la Terre, 29; Germain-Jones, “What is our contribution?”; Dunlap and Johnson, “Research and progress in exploration,” 274. Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, 233-4. Ibid.
21
NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/1-2756, Foreign Service Dispatch, Amcongen Algiers to DS, official use only, Lewis Clark, Indications of Petroleum Discovered in the Sahara, 27 January 1956; Archives Nationales dʼOutre-mer, Aix-en-Provence (ANOM) – Fonds ministériel (FM), Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/2069, fd. untitled, The Director of the Bureau de recherches de pétrole to Monsieur Ricard, Administrateur du B.R.P.: Rapport sur les recherches de pétrole en France Métropolitaine, en Afrique du nord et dans les Territoires dʼOutre-Mer au cours de lʼannée 1954, 19 February 1955, p. IV-4; Rapport sur les recherches de pétrole en France Métropolitaine, en Afrique du nord et dans les Territoires dʼOutre-Mer au cours de lʼannée 1954, 25 February 1954, p. 9. 22
Bagnato, “Une solidarité ambiguë”; Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 104, 107. 23 The quote is from: NARA - FRUS, 1955-1957, XVIII, Africa, 3 October 1956, Enclosure, p. 139. El Mechat, Les États-Unis et lʼAlgérie, 36-7; Id., “Les États-Unis et la question coloniale,” 258. 24 The quote is from: Thomas, The French North African Crisis, 153-4. Source reported: TNA – Public Records Office – FO 371/125944, f. JR 10317/59, Sir Frank Roberts to A.D.M. Ross, 1 October 1957. 25 El Mechat, Les États-Unis et la question coloniale,” 259. 26
Centre de recherches sur lʼAfrique méditerraneéenne, “LʼAlgérie et les hydrocarbures,” 99. 27 Sèbe, “In the Shadow,” 304. 28
ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/966, fd. Recherches de pétrole, secret, coded telegram no. 5218, The Governor General of Algeria (Southern Territory) to Secretary of the Interior, Chargé of Algerian Affairs Directorate of Algerian Affairs, 18 February 1956. 29 ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/966, fd. Recherches de pétrole, secret, telegram to code no. 92, The Secretary of the Interior, Chargé of Algerian Affairs - Directorate of Algerian Affairs, to the Resident Minister in Algeria - Cabinet of the Governor General in Algiers, 17 February 1956. 30 ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/966, fd. Recherches de pétrole, secret, The Governor General of Algeria to The Secretary of the Interior, Chargé of Algerian Affairs - Directorate of Algerian Affairs, Frontière algéro-libyenne dans la région de lʼEdjele In Azaoua, 20 February 1956. This episode is also reported in: Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 99. 31
3. AN - b. 19900317/21, fd. 1, Entretien du mercredi 26 mars à 10h., 4 April 1956 (FOIA n° 111 382); NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal File, 1955-1959, b. 2622, f. 651S.7331/5-256, DS, Memorandum of Conversation, “Standard Oil Company of New Jersey Position Regarding the Algerian/Libyan Border Dispute”, official use only, 2 May 1956. 32 AN - b. 19900317/21, fd. 1: très secret, Légation de France en Libye, Attaché Militaire, The Lieutenant-Colonel de Seze, Military Attaché to the Legation of France in Libya, to the General of the Army, Chief of Staff of Armed Forces, E.M.F.A. - 2ème Division, 25 May 1956; très secret, Légation de France en Libye, M. Jacques Dumarçay, Minister of France in Libya, to His Excellency Mr. Christian Pineau, Minster of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Africa-Levant, Vérification du tracé de la frontière franco-libyenne, 26 May 1956; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Economic and Financial Affairs, to the State Secretary to Industry and Commerce, Rapport de mission sur la commission de délimitation de la frontière franco-libyenne de Ghat à Ghadamès, 2 January 1957 (contains a Note sur la négociation fronalière franco-libyenne, 23 Octobre - 26 Décembre 1956) (FOIA n° 111 382). 33 NARA - FRUS, 1955-1957, XVIII, Africa, Telegram From Mʼhammed Yazid of the National Liberation Front of Algeria to President Eisenhower, 23 October 1956, p. 246. 34 NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal File, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 3378, f. 751S.00/11-756, DS, telegram from US Embassy in Paris (Amemb Paris), to Secretary of State, confidential, 7 November 1956, signed Dillon; Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Roma (ASMAE) - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958 - b. 74 (Algeria ʼ57), Quaroni to Italian Foreign Ministry (MAEI), Italian Embassy London and Washington. “Presunti aiuti americani alla ribellione algerina”, 5 February 1957; Thomas, The French North African Crisis, 143. 35
NARA - RG 59, Records of the Office of Western European Affairs, Subject File Relating to France, 1944-60, Lot 61D30, b. 2, fd. 16 Algeria-ARAMCO, confidential, Memorandum, Robert Looram, 25 February 1957. Emphasis in the original. 36
When Mollet visited Algiers in February 1956, a few weeks after becoming prime minister, he was pelted with rotten tomatoes by French Algerian settlers at a demonstration. Stora, Histoire de la guerre dʼAlgérie, 20. 37
NARA - RG 59, Records of the Office of Western European Affairs, Subject File Relating to France, 1944-60, Lot 61D30, b. 2, f. 16, Algeria-Aramco, confidential, Memorandum, Robert McBride to Matthew Looram, confidential,
25 February 1957; Matthew Looram to Robert McBride, 27 March 1957. 38
NARA - RG 59, Records of the Office of Western European Affairs, Subject File Relating to France, 1944-60, Lot 61D30, b. 2, f. 16, Algeria-ARAMCO, confidential, Matthew Looram to Robert McBride, 27 March 1957. 39 NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal File, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 3378, f. 751S.00/11-1456, DS, Memorandum of Conversation between Mr. James T. Duce, Vice President, Aramco, and Mr. Fraser Wilkins, Director, NE, official use only: “Fund for the Algerian Rebels”, 14 November 1956; AN - b. 19900317/8, fd. 1, sub-fd. Afrique 1957/77, secret, Note SDECE, Position américaine vis-à-vis de la présence française en Afrique, 9 July 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). 40 On France in Suez expedition, see: Beaufre, The Suez Expedition; Vaïsse, “France and the Suez Crisis”. 41 Wall, France, the United States, 33; Melby, Oil and the International System, 241. 42
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NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal File, 1955-1959, French Africa, b. 3378, f. 751S.00/11-1856, Wm. R. Woodward to John Foster Dulles, 18 November 1956. Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, La Courneuve (ADMAE) - Série: Affaires économiques et financières. Sous-série: Dirécteur - Wormser. N. 94. DE-CE Papiers Dirécteur Olivier Wormser. DAEF. Note nº 1 sur le problème pétrolier français en 1957, 4 September 1956; Note DAEF, Problème du pétrole, 27 November 1956. Jonchay, “Lʼinfrastructure”. For a history of the OCRS, see: Boilley, “OCRS/Royaume Sanussi,” 235-6, 240. Boilley, “OCRS/Royaume Sanussi,” 364. Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 124, 126. Sources reported: Centre national des archives algériennes - GPRA, b. 4, Yazid, “Rapport dʼactivité au cours de la onzième session de lʼAssemblée Générale des Nations Unies”: the memo is reprinted as an annex to Georges-Picotʼs report to Pineau, 4 Jan 1957, DDF, 1957, I, no. 17; ADMAE - Série ONU, b. 550, Statement by Guy Mollet, Premier on French Policy in Algeria”, 9 January 1957; b. 549, “Minute” from the Secrétariat des conférences to Georges-Picot, 23 January 57. Porch, The French Secret Services, 366. Guillaumat had taken back the leadership of the oil agency by replacing Blancard in 1955, and combined this position with that of general manager of the French Commissariat à lʼénergie atomique, which he had taken from 1951. The first French nuclear test took place at Reggane in February 1960. See: Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, 258, on this point. ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/966, fd. Le FLN et le pétrole saharien: secret, Groupe d’études des problèmes de Défense Nationale liés à la mise en valeur du Sahara, Compte rendu de la séance inaugurale, 21 March 1957; Compte rendu de la première séance tenue le 21 mars 1957 sous la présidence de M. l’Ambassadeur Eirik LABONNE, 12 April 1957; Compte rendu de la séance du 30 avril 1957, sur l’étude du tracé des pipe-lines destinés à l’acheminement des richesses pétrolières en territoire algérien, 11 May 1957; Compte rendu de la séance du 25 juillet 1957 sur l’étude d’un programme de réalisation de l’infrastructure aérienne, 7 August 1957. The issue of the protection of oil infrastructures, and of the best layout to choose for pipelines was extensively discussed in 1957 and 1958, and can be found in: ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/966, fds: Recherches de pétrole; Le FLN et le pétrole saharien, Évacuation des pétroles sahariens; untitled. Sèbe, “In the Shadow,” 307-8. ASMAE - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958 - b. 74 (Algeria ʼ57), telesp. N. Ris. 1143/871, Caracciolo to MAEI, “Conferenza stampa del Ministro Max Lejeune sullo sfruttamento del Sahara”, 15 July 1957. Ardesi, “La politica estera,” 10-1; Sèbe, “In the Shadow,” 308, 310. ASMAE - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958 - b. 74 (Algeria ʼ57), Quaroni to MAEI, “Viaggio in Africa del Vice Presidente Nixon”, 11 March 1957. My own translation. NARA - FRUS, 1955-1957, XVIII, Africa, “Report to the President on the Vice Presidentʼs Visit to Africa, February 28 - March 21, 1957”, secret, 5 April 1957. AN - b. 199003117/8: fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64, secret, Note SDECE, Les compagnies pétrolières américaines et le Sahara français, 17 December 1956 (FOIA n° 111 382); fd. 1, sub-fd. Algérie 1957/77, secret, SDECE, Position américaine vis-à-vis de la présence française en Afrique, 9 July 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). Amongst other things, the 1956 note reported a meeting between Arthur Flemming, Director of the US Office of Defense Mobilisation, and Frederick Coqueron, member of the Chase Bank, SONJ and Soconyʼs reference bank. AN - b. 199003117/8, fd. 1, sub-fd. Algérie 1957/77, secret, Note SDECE, Position américaine vis-à-vis de la présence française en Afrique, 9 July 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). On the application of the Eisenhower Doctrine to Middle Eastern countries, see: Yaqub, Salim (2004) Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Quoted from: AN - b. 199003117/8, fd. 1, sub-fd. Algérie 1957/77, secret, Note SDECE, Position américaine vis-àvis de la présence française en Afrique, 9 July 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). My own translation. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 510 et seq. Source reported in Bagnato, “Une solidarité ambiguë”, note 35; Bourdrel, La dernière chance; Wall, France, the United States, 85. NARA - FRUS, 1955-1957, XVIII, Africa, Memorandum of Conversation, Department of State, Washington, “Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy on Algeria, on Tuesday, July 2”, confidential, 1 July 1957; Bourdrel (1996),
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154. AN - b. 199003117/8, fd. 1, sub-fd. Algérie 1957/77, secret, Note SDECE, Position américaine vis-à-vis de la présence française en Afrique, 9 July 1957, p. 5 (FOIA n° 111 382). El Mechat, “Les États-Unis et la question coloniale,” 261. El Mechat, Les États-Unis et lʼAlgérie, 55. Sèbe, “In the Shadow,” 311-2. Sèbe, “In the Shadow”. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/7-957, DS, Memorandum of Conversation, “U. S. Oil Companyʼs Concessions in the Sahara”, 9 July 1957. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/9-1357, Amemb Paris to DS, “Recent Development re U.S. Oil Company Interest in Sahara Exploration”, official use only, 13 September 1957. Also SONJ, Richfield Oil, Texas Eastern Transmission and Texas Gulf Producing showed an interest in oil prospecting in Algeria in 1957. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/11-2657, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Petroleum and Mineral Development in the Sahara”, 26 November 1957. Ibid. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4603, f. 851S.00/7-1059, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Minerals and Petroleum Report”, 3 October 1958. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/6-2157, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Petroleum and Natural Gas in the Sahara”, 21 June 1957. This and the following quote are from: NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/6-2458, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Saharan Petroleum Developments”, limited official use, 24 June 1958 (signed Frederick B. Lyon), pp. 3-4. Ibid. AN - b. 19900317/8, fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64, secret, Note SDECE, Les Anglo-Saxons et le pétroles sahariens, 30 December 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/9-1558, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “New petroleum exploration permits granted in Sahara”, unclassified, 15 September 1958 (signed Frederick B. Lyon). NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604: f. 851S.2553/12-1357, DS, Memorandum of Conversation, “Standard Oilʼs Operations in Algeria”, confidential, 13 December 1957; f. 851S.2553/1-458, outgoing telegram n. 2452 from DS to Amemb Paris, signed Dulles, official use only, 4 January 1958. Bagnato, “Une solidarité ambiguë”. For a coverage of the Anglo-American good offices mission, see: Barei, “The Sakiet Sidi Youssef incident”; Calchi Novati, “I rapporti fra FLN e Tunisia”; Kettle, De Gaulle and Algeria, 482-3. Thomas, The French North African Crisis, 156; Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 395. AN - b. 19900317/8, fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64, secret, Note SDECE, Le F.L.N. et le pétrole du Sahara, 16 April 1958 (FOIA n° 111 382). Ibid., 16. Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, 243. Documentation of the exchanges between members of the staff of Saharan and metropolitan ministries on this subject is found in: ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964), b. 81F/1476: fd. Protection du Pipe-Line HassiMessaoud, fd. Examen du projet de décret par le Conseil d’État. On FLN’s plans of sabotaging oil infrastructures, see: ANOM - FM, Affaires algériennes (1873/1964) , b. 81F/966, fd. Recherches de pétrole; AN - b. 19900317/8, fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64. Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 203. Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, 256. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604: f. 851S.2553/6-2458, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Saharan Petroleum Developments”, limited official use, 24 June 1958 (signed Frederick B. Lyon); f. 851S.2553/9-1558, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “New petroleum exploration permits granted in Sahara”, unclassified, 15 September 1958 (signed Frederick B. Lyon). Fosset, “Pétrole et gaz naturel,” 298; Murat, Lʼintervention de lʼÉtat, 93; Benchikh, “La nouvelle loi pétrolière,” point 23 of the online version (available: http://anneemaghreb.revues.org/103, accessed 11 April 2015). For a complete study of the Saharan Oil Code, see: Benchikh, Les Instruments juridiques. Murat, Lʼintervention de lʼÉtat, 91; Benchikh, “La nouvelle loi pétrolière,” 8-9. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files: 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/1-959, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Saharan Petroleum Developments”, limited official use, 9 January 1959; 1960-63, Economic Affairs, French Africa, b. 2569, f. 851S.25/5-1360, Amcongen Algiers to DS, “Annual Mineral and Petroleum Report for Algeria, 1959”, unclassified, 13 May 1960. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/2-1959, DS, Memorandum of Conversation, “U.S. Oil Company Interests in the Sahara”, official use only, 19 February 1959; NARA - RG 59, African Lot, Bureau of African Affairs, Office of Northern African Affairs, Records Relating to Algeria, 1952-1962,
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b. 1, entry A1 3109B, fd. A6 Petroleum: Free Algeria - Front of National Liberation Delegation, News Bulletin, Press Release, “The Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic repudiates Sahara oil pacts made with France by foreign concerns”, 28 January 1959. See also, in the same folder: Interview of Mr. A. Chanderli, permanent representative of the Algerian Front of National Liberation in the United States with Mr. Bill Oatis (Associated Press), New York, 28 January 1959, 12.00 p.m.; AN - b. 199003117/8, fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64, secret, Note SDECE, Le F.L.N. et le pétrole saharien, 24 February 1959 (FOIA n° 111 382). AN - b. 199003117/8, fd. 3, Algérie-Sahara, coded telegram, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Economic and Financial Affairs, General Affairs and International Transports, to The Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Fuels Directorate, a.s. Mohammed YAZID et Compagnie pétrolières américaines - Correspondance échangée entre le Département et lʼAmbassade de France à Washington, 21 February 1959. This file includes letters exchanged between Alphand and French Foreign ministry (MAEF) on 4, 6, 11 and 16 February (FOIA n° 111 382). However, when in January 1959 Yazid asked the State Department to buy US weapons, this refused. NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 1955-59, French Africa, b. 4604, f. 851S.2553/2-659, DS, Memorandum of Conversation, “FLN Relations with U.S. Oil Companies”, official use only, 6 February 1959. AHTOTAL - Fonds Total-CFP, b. 92.26/9, fd. Politique algérienne jusque fin 1962, J.M. Guldner to M. de Laboulaye: CISL - Cercle Ouvrier, Pétrole et gaz sahariens, 1 March 1961; Fosset (1962), 298. ASMAE - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958 - b. 74 (Algeria ʼ57), telesp. N. Ris. 1484/1143, Quaroni to MAEI, “Ricerche petrolifere nel Sahara”, 28 October 1957. My own translation. Ibid. The model for the new contracts had been proposed by the Iranians, not Mattei, as has often been maintained in the Italian literature. Tremolada, La via italiana, 310. For an analysis of ENIʼs activities in Iran in the 1950s, refer to the same volume; for American diplomacyʼs point of view on the Italian-Iranian agreement, see: NARA - RG 59, Central Decimal File, 1955-1959, Iran, bxs. 4973 and 4974. See also: Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti, 136-46. For example, he was sent on missions to Jeddah and Cairo in early 1959. Tremolada, La via italiana, 350. ASMAE - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958, b. 81 (Algeria ʼ58), telesp. N. Ris. 851, Quaroni to MAEI, “I rapporti italo-francesi”, 14 March 1958. Also in: Bagnato, Petrolio e politica, 27; Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 399. ENIʼs ownership of Il Giorno would not be publicly disclosed until 1960. ASMAE - Direzione Generale Affari Politici, Ufficio I (1947-1960), b. 43, telesp. n. Ris. 1539/1191, Quaroni to MAEI, “Attacco dei ribelli ad un gruppo di esperti petroliferi francesi nel Sahara - Reazioni francesi all ʼarticolo del “Giorno” sul Sahara”, 11 November 1957. My own translation; AN - b. 19900317/13, fd. 1, sub-fd. Italie 1955/1979, Note pour Monsieur de Directeur - Compte rendu de la réunion tenue chez M. Daridant avec MM. Baudet, Sébilleau, Jordan, le 14.11.57, Articles inspirés par M. MATTEI, dans “Il Giorno” - Conférence de MATTEI à PARIS le 22 Novembre: “LʼItalie et le pétrole”, 16 November 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). Buccianti, Enrico Mattei, 61. Source: ADMAE - EU 1956-1960, Italie, 297, Europe, Série 21, Sous-série 23, Dossier 15, Italie, Politique Extérieure, télégramme de Fouques-Duparc à MAEF, 10 September 1957. My own translation. ASMAE - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958 - b. 74 (Algeria ʼ57), Quaroni to Magistrati, Direzione Generale Affari Politici, MAEI, 12 November 1957. Buccianti, Enrico Mattei, 60. Source: ADMAE - EU 1956-1960, Italie, 297, Europe, Série 21, Sous-série 23, Dossier 15, Italie, Politique Extérieure, Télegramme de Fouques-Duparc à MAEI, 13 September 1957. AN - b. 19900317/13, fd. 1, sub-fd. Italie 1955/1979, French Embassy Rome (Palewski) to Minister of Foreign Affairs (Pineau), Opinion italienne et question algérienne. Propos de M. SARAGAT, 5 December 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). Kablia, “Enrico Mattei e la Rivoluzione Algerina”. An indication of the good disposition of the Italian government toward the FLN/GPRA representative was given after a failed attempt to assassinate Boulahrouf in July 1959, presumably orchestrated by the terrorist organisation Main Rouge, which secretly acted as SDECE's armed wing. After the episode, according to Rédha Malek, Fernando Tambroni, the Italian Minister of Interior, gave Boulahrouf a Beretta gun and a gun licence. Malek, L'Algérie à Évian, 75. As for the Italian 'Mediterranean mission', see Brogi, L'Italia e l'egemonia americana, 59, 125-6; Id., A Question of Self-Esteem, 204-10. Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, 172, 193-7; Bagnato, L'Italia e la guerra d'Algeria, 32-4. Eveno and Planchais, La guerre dʼAlgérie, 177. China was to be the first non-Arab country to recognise Algerian independence in 1962. AHTOTAL - Fonds Total-CFP, b. 90.4/164, Négociations franco-GPRA et le Sahara, fd. Réactions des pays arabes aux Accords dʼÉvian, Agence France-Presse, Bulletin de 12 heures, Un accord de coopération entre lʼU.R.S.S. et le G.P.R.A., 17 November 1961. Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 442-5 (and notes 76 and 78 therein), 470; ADMAE - Série: Affaires économiques et financières. Sous-série: Dirécteur - Wormser. N. 85. DE-CE Papiers Dirécteur Olivier Wormser, Note DAEF “Visite de M. Fanfani - M. Mattéi et le pétrole”, 6 August 1958, p. 3-4. About ENIʼs Moroccan exploration permit, see: NARA - RG 59, African Lot, Bureau of African Affairs, Office of Northern African Affairs, Records Relating to Morocco, 1955-1962, b. 4, entry A1 3109D, fd. M-12, Mattei/Moroccan Oil Concession, 14 October 1958.
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Kablia, “Enrico Mattei e la Rivoluzione Algerina,” 18. Most Italian journalistic sources report this thesis. See, for example: Lomartire, Mattei, 216; Pirani, Poteva andare peggio, 292. ADMAE - Série: Affaires économiques et financières. Sous-série: Dirécteur - Wormser. N. 85. DE-CE Papiers Dirécteur Olivier Wormser, Note DAEF “Visite de M. Fanfani - M. Mattéi et le pétrole”, 6 August 1958, p. 3-4. ADMAE - Série: Cabinet du Ministre, Sous-série: Couve du Murville (1958-1968). N. 70, Blancard (BRP) to MAEF, 24 June 1960. From ENI sources, however, it emerges that CEPʼs President, André Demargne, had been the one to approach AGIP Mineraria. ASENI - Fondo ENI, Estero, Assistente del Presidente per lʼestero, b. 16: fd. A2A, “Proposta di collaborazione per le ricerche di idrocarburi nel Sahara Francese”, 11 January 1957 (signed Cesare Gavotti); fd. A3E, “Notizie e prospettive Sahara”, 13 April 1957. AN - b. 19900317/24, fd. 3, sub-fd. Italie Mons Mattei, 1957/58, PV du Comité Spécial du BRP, séance n. 64 du 22 janvier 1957, Annexe III p. 4, 22 January 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). Quoted from: AN - b. 19900317/24, fd. 3, sub-fd. Italie Mons Mattei, 1957/58, Note pour Monsieur de Directeur Compte rendu de la réunion tenue chez M. Daridant avec MM. Baudet, Sébilleau, Jordan, le 14.11.57, Articles inspirés par M. Mattei, dans “Il Giorno” - Conférence de MATTEI à PARIS le 22 Novembre: “LʼItalie et le pétrole”, 16 November 1957 (FOIA n° 111 382). My own translation. ASMAE - Ambasciata dʼItalia a Parigi, 1951-1958, b. 81 (Algeria ʼ58), telesp. N. Ris. 785/575, Caracciolo to MAEI, confidential, 10 May 1957. AN - b. 19900317/24, fd. 3, sub-fd. Italie Mons Mattei, 1957/58, The Ambassador of France in Poland (Burin des Roziers) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Couve de Murville), Conversation avec M. Mattei au sujet du pétrole saharien, 20 November 1958 (FOIA n° 111 382); ASENI - Fondo ENI, Presidenza Mattei, b. 75, fd. 150, Appunto, Roma, 20 November 1958. Bagnato, Prove di Ostpolitik, 222-3; Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 706. Malek, LʼAlgérie à Évian, 73-4. In October 1958, La Pira organised a Mediterranean Meeting in Florence, which was funded by ENI. The meeting became an excellent political platform for FLNʼs representatives, causing the withdrawal of the French delegation. On the meeting, see: Bagnato, “La Pira, de Gaulle,” 99-134; Id., LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 482-512. About Matteiʼs funding of the meeting: Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 502 note 192. Source reported: ADMAE - Série: Italie, b. 299, n. 1599/EU, G. Palewski, Rome, 16 October 1958. Malek, LʼAlgérie à Évian, 202. On the Tunisian-Italian agreement, see: AHTOTAL - Fonds Total-CFP, b. 97AA096, fd. 1, f. 1, ENI 1960-1961: Relazioni e bilanci delle principali società del gruppo al 31 dicembre 60, p. 42. The agreement between AGIP Mineraria and the Tunisian Government was signed on 1 June 1960. ADMAE - Série: Affaires économiques et financières. Sous-série: Dirécteur - Wormser. N. 85. DE-CE Papiers Dirécteur Olivier Wormser, Parodi (French Embassy, Rabat) to Wormser (MAEF), 22 August 1960. AN - b. 19900317/13, fd. 1, sub-fd. Italie 1955/1979, secret, SDECE, Notice dʼinformation - Lʼactivité de lʼEnte nazionale idrocarburi (octobre 1959 - octobre 1960), 18 October 1960, p. 3 (FOIA n° 111 382). ADMAE - Série: Cabinet du Ministre, Sous-série: Couve de Murville (1958-1968). N. 70, Blancard (BRP) to MAEF, 24 June 1960. ASENI - Fonti orali - Interviste: Mario Pirani, b. 3, fds. 462B and 462C, n. 47, Colloquio di Mario Pirani con Vincenzo Gandolfi, “Ricordi e riflessioni di un ex-ambasciatore di Metanopoli”, 22 October 1992; Buccianti, Enrico Mattei, 250 et seq; Perrone, Obiettivo Mattei,19-20; Pirani, Poteva andare peggio, 292-3; AN - b. 19900317/8, fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64, secret (do not commnunicate to Allies), Note SDECE, Algérie-Italie - Mattei et le G.P.R.A., 26 September 1961 (FOIA n° 111 382); Bagnato, Petrolio e politica, 367. Source reported: ADMAE - Secrétariat dʼÉtat aux Affaires Algériennes, 1959-1967, “Note du service de renseignement britannique”, très secret, source à protéger, 23 September 1961. Briatico, Ascesa e declino, 15. The quote is from p. 20. My own translation. Bagnato, Petrolio e politica, 367; Cresti and Gregni, “La Guerra di Liberazione,” 91. Both works report this source: ADMAE - Secrétariat dʼÉtat aux Affaires Algériennes, 1959-1967, SDECE, “Note dʼinformation”, Bureau du Premier Ministre, très secret, source à protéger tout particulièrement, 16 November 1961. The Union générale was also part of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations AFL-CIO, directed by Irving Brown, who actively supported the Algerian cause. Malek, LʼAlgérie à Évian, 35. Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution, 343 note 58. Source: ADMAE - Secrétariat dʼÉtat aux Affaires Algériennes, b. 114 - Affaires Politiques, Evian Accords, SDECE report, unsigned, 2 June 1961; Porch, The French Secret Services, 372-3, 581. Bagnato, “LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria,” 39. Source reported: Centre des archives économiques et financières, Savigy le Temple - b. 10777, Note dʼinformation personnelle, “Quelques aspects des activités extérieures de M. Enrico Mattei en Afrique et en Europe”, 331/II E, 7 July 1961; AN - b. 19900317/8, fd. 2, Algérie 1957/64, secret (do not communicate to Allies), Note SDECE, Algérie-Italie, Ingérences dʼEnrico Mattei, 16 January 1962. However, I could not find any document supporting this claim in the schoolʼs archives, and among its students there appears to be no Algerian or French of Algerian origin at least until7 April 2003. Quoted from: Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 708. Source: Archives nationales dʼAlgérie - Fonds GPRA, B. Krim to E. Mattei, Cairo, 28 June 1960. My own tr 1962. But see: Bagnato, “LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria,” 39. Source reported: Interview to dr. Eugenio Cefis, 1anslation.
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Faivre, Les archives inédites, 337. Source reported: ‘Essai de définition dʼune position gouvernementale sur le Saharaʼ (sent by B. Tricot to L. Joxe, 10 April 1961). On Tricotʼs role at the first Évian negotiations, see Malek, LʼAlgérie à Évian, 136-40. Wall, France, the United States, 307 note 40. Source reported: Procès-verbeaux [recte: verbaux] de la Conférence dʼEvian, May 21-June 13, 1961, DDF, 1961, I, pp. 772-95. Malek, LʼAlgérie à Évian, 158-63. Bagnato, “LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria,” 39. ASENI - Fonti orali - Interviste: Mario Pirani, b. 3, f. 462B and 462C, n. 47, Colloquio di Mario Pirani con Vincenzo Gandolfi, “Ricordi e riflessioni di un ex-ambasciatore di Metanopoli”, 22 October 1992, pp. 13-4. Khelladi, “Testimonianza,” 58. Abdelmadjid Chikhi, General Director of the National Algerian Archives, tells about the help provided by ENI to the Algerian Minister of Armaments and General Relations for the collection of data on the Algerian subsoil. Chikhi, “Gli Accordi di Evian,” 62. Malek, L'Algérie à Évian, 197-8, 201. Testimonies of ENI ‘ambassadorsʼ have also been reported by other authors. See, for example: Buccianti, Enrico Mattei, 231. The folder is included in: ASENI - Fondo ENI, Relazioni Esterne, b. 129, fd. 2F2B. Archivio Tecnico-Scientifico ENI, San Donato Milanese - ENI U 1.018.801, Myron T. Kozáry, Algeria - Prospects of the Algerian Sahara, Geological Report no. 6. Kozáry, a US citizen, had worked within the US intelligence services during World War II, and had done his PhD fieldwork in Revolution-era Cuba, while working for the American International Oil Company in the 1950s. He later moved to New York as a staff geologist within the same company, and studied the geology of Europe, Africa and the Middle East extensively. DeLand, “Memorial”. Quoted from: ASENI - Fondo ENI, Estero, Rapporti commerciali con lʼestero, b. 73, fd. 2003, “Visita agli uffici, ai laboratori e al giacimento petrolifero di Hassi-Messaoud”, by C. Loddo, 20 December 1960. The “very liberal” quote is from the same document. My own translation. Ibid. ASENI - Fondo AGIP, Direzione Mineraria, Ricerche e produzione, b. 355, f. 3FC, Roger (CGG) to Egidi (AGIP Mineraria), 8 March 1962; Roger to Egidi, 29 March 1962. Bagnato, Petrolio e politica, 348-9. Source: Centre des archives économiques et financières, Savigy le Temple Archives du Ministère de lʼEconomie et des finances, Fonds Trésor, Bureau F1, Affaires Internationales: Italie 19231965, b. 10777, Note dʼinformation personnelle “Quelques aspects des activités extérieures de M. Enrico Mattei en Afrique et en Europe”, 331/II E, 7 July 1961. Quoted from: NARA - FRUS, 1961-1963, Vol. XIII, West Europe and Canada, Memorandum of Conversation, “Mattei and ENI”, 17 March 1962, p. 830. Bagnato, LʼItalia e la guerra dʼAlgeria, 697; Jean Lacouture, in Eveno and Planchais, La guerre dʼAlgérie, 318. Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France, 268. ASENI - Fondo ENI, Estero, Assistente del Presidente per lʼestero, b. 76, fd. 20D6, MAEI - General Direction of Economic Affairs (DGAE, henceforth), Bureau VI, to Ministries of Industry and Commerce, State Holdings, Foreign Trade, ENI, urgent: “Accordi di Evian - Ricerca e sfruttamento petrolio nel Sahara”, 23 March 1962. The placing of explosives on Matteiʼs plane has in the past been attributed to American majors backed by the Sicilian mafia; large Italian industrialists; to Matteiʼs de facto successor at the presidency of ENI, Eugenio Cefis; to the French Organisation de lʼarmée secrète; or to collaborations between these suspects. De Vosjoliʼs statement is reported in: Porc, The French Secret Services, 373 notes 28 and 29. Briatico, Ascesa e declino, 31; Buccianti, Enrico Mattei, 292; Lo Bianco and Rizza, Profondo Nero, 65-6; AN - b. 199003117/13, fd. 1, sub-fd. Italie 1955/1979, secret, Note SDECE, Italie - Activités de la Fiat et de lʼENI en Afrique du Nord, 10 August 1962 (FOIA n° 111 382). The placing of explosives on Matteiʼs plane has in the past been attributed to American majors backed by the Sicilian mafia; large Italian industrialists; to Matteiʼs de facto successor at the presidency of ENI, Eugenio Cefis; to the French Organisation de lʼarmée secrète; or to collaborations between these suspects. De Vosjoliʼs statement is reported in: Porc, The French Secret Services, 373 notes 28 and 29. Centre de recherches sur lʼAfrique méditerraneéenne, “LʼAlgérie et les hydrocarbures,” 99.
