Page 321 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Eight

Negotiations between Petroleum Concessions Ltd. and
Trucial States Rulers
During the early 1930s representatives of IheD’Arcy Exploration Co.,
a major shareholder in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, obtained
options from most of the Trucial Rulers.50 Petroleum Concessions
Ltd. took over these options and began after 1935 to negotiate
concessions with the Rulers. This proved in some cases exceedingly
difficult, because, much as some Rulers might have wanted to be
obliging over issues which were then foremost in the minds of the
British authorities, and great though their interest was in securing a
steady income from rentals for oil concessions, their subjects were
generally opposed to the change and disturbance which an influx of
Europeans would bring. Each Ruler watched carefully to see that
the terms he obtained were as good as those of any of his neigh­
bours.57 The negotiations were further complicated by the fact that
sovereignty over certain territories was disputed by some of the
Rulers.
In 1936 SaTd bin Maktum, the Ruler of Dubai, who had usually
shown himself receptive to proposals by the British Government and
in turn had relied heavily on the support of the Political Resident in a
series of internal power struggles, was the first to initial an agree­
ment with PCL (Petroleum Concessions Ltd.), which was ratified in
May 1937. In September of the same year the Ruler of Sharjah signed
a similar agreement. Approaches to the Ruler of Ra’s al Khaimah
failed to bring results before the beginning of the Second World War,
because the dispute over the succession in Kalba had precipitated a
head-on collision between the British authorities and Shaikh Sultan
bin Salim of Ra’s al Khaimah.58 He had already been very unco­
operative over the granting of refuelling rights for the RAF and civil
aviation requested by the British authorities. The recognition of
Kalba as a separate Trucial State by the British Government through
the signing of an agreement with Sa'fd bin Hamad in August 1936,
allowing Imperial Airways to land there in an emergency, meant that
a separate oil-concession agreement could also be concluded and
was signed in 1938 by the Regent of Kalba Khalid bin Ahmad, after
Sa'fd’s death.
The only other agreement concluded before the war was that with
Shaikh ShakhbOt in Abu Dhabi in 1939. In Ra’s al Khaimah, Umm al
Qaiwain and 'Ajman the options were converted into concessions
only in 1945,1949, and 1951 respectively. The Ruler of Fujairah, who

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