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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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