Burt E. Hull Interview - Burt E. Hull Interview [part 5 of 6]

TOPIC: Houston, Beaumont, (Also accounts of world-wide pipeline work) NAMES Burt E. Hull

INTERVIEWER: W. A. Owens PLACE: Dallas, Texas TAPE NO. 130 DATE: 8/24/53 RESTRICTIONS: None

O.- Before we go ahead to talk about your experiences in Mexico,

I'd like for you to tell the story about the fire in the wastebasket.

H.- Well, that occurred in Houston shortly

after the company moved its headquarters from Beaumont to Houston.

And occupied then what is now the National Standards Building,

I believe in the eight hundred block of Houston.

Anyhow it's next door to what is now the Gulf Building.

I had offices on the second floor and was chief engineer for the refining department.

Mr. Holmes, then manager of the refining department, had

offices up somewhere near the main street or front end of the building.

And one, on the ground floor, was occupied by the Carter Music Company.

Old man Carter made it a habit of driving to work every morning.

He lived way out near St. Joseph's Hospital somewhere.

And he had some kind of phaeton or something and an old bay horse

that drove down to work every morning, and hitched to a tree on a vacant lot,

then vacant, now occupied by the Gulf Building, or rather the National Bank of Commerce.

And the tree was right outside the window of my office on the second floor.

And the horse had the habit of going to sleep and laying down in the shafts,

soon after Mr. Carter came to work in the morning.

Well, anyway one day just before noon Mr.

Holmes rang for me to come into his office to ask some question or something.

And I was smoking a stogie, and I went off and left a

lighted stogie laying on the drafting board right above

the wirebasket in which there was some inflammable papers on the floor.

I ran into Mr. Holmes office to see what he wanted, what he called me for.

I was not gone more than five minutes, I don't think.

And I came back and the whole office was full of flames.

Some hot ashes had dropped off of the stogie into the

wastebasket or something, set the paper afire and it was all burning.

Well, I had a fire on my hands to put out somehow and I didn't know what to do with that fire.

So I just picked that basket of papers burning and all and threw them out the window.

And they landed right on this horse and he was laying down between the shafts,

old man Carter's horse.

So he got up righto He was startled, and he got up right quick and he kicked himself

loose from the phaeton and broke the harness all to pieces and got loose from the tree,

and started out the front and run down Main Street.

And Mr. Carter was so busy

getting hold of the local police to chase his horse down Main Street and try to catch him,

he didn't stop to examine what had startled the horse and made him wake up in the first place.

But it was always a source of amusement to me to see.

It isn't amusing to lose your harness and a buggy, but that horse running,

running down Main Street with old man Carter and the police department trying to catch him.

It's always been amusing to me.

O.- Well, Houston was not much of a city in those days.

H.- Oh, no. I doubt if it had over a hundred thousand people in the county.

O.- Well, your work at Port Arthur was with the refinery chiefly--

H.- Yes, all together. I was at Port Arthur about ten years.

O.- Well, are there--

H.- No, no, I moved to Houston part of the time, I forgot.

I moved to Houston and made that headquarters.

After leaving the refining department,

Dave, Mr. Holmes, who was vice-president and manager of the refining department, assumed the

additional obligation of looking after the Mexico properties in 1920 or thereabout, '21.

I had been down there. No, before then, it must have been about 1915.

I had been down there once or twice in 1912 to 1914.

And had been down there again in 1915.

And they decided in 1915 that the

person who was in charge of Mexican properties was not aggressive enough.

Others, other companies were going in there getting big production and

everything and the Texas Company was sitting there watching their

competitors progress right along and grow and expand, and they wasn't doing anything.

So they told Holmes to take it over and see what he could do with it for a while.

And so when he took it over, then he sent me down there to live,

about 1921, '2, '21, I guess it was.

O.- You lived in the fields down around Tampico?

H.- No, I lived in Tampico.

O. Lived in Tampico. H.- Yes.

O.- And how long were you in Mexico then?

H.- Five years, I lived there five years.

O.- Well, could you tell me something about the special problems that you had there,

that the Americans had operating in Mexico that you didn't have in this country?

H.- Well, of course we first had a different form of government,

not a different form but a different government and different ways or rather entirely different

methods of looking at administering it. And

the courts and so on--that was peculiar to Americans.

And then there were a lot of bandits around

Tampico that never did give us any trouble in the United States.

We didn't have them, didn't exist up here.

And unless you were smart enough to

be a good thief, you didn't amount to much in Mexico, apparently.

And I would say that the most peculiar characteristic, or the one that

gave the Americans more bother and more concern than anything else, was the tendency of kidnapping

executives and holding them for ransom.

Or the tendency of bandits to

commit murder or do whatever is necessary to gain possession of payrolls in cash.

There was a law down there then that you had to pay all workmen, all help, in

coin or in national gold.

They called "oro nacional," gold or silver coins.

That is, all Mexican help.

Of course your Americans you could do as you please.

O.- Yes.

H.- So that was a big part of the payroll.

You had to have about two-thirds of your payroll in Mexican help.

And so that was a problem.

Each week you had to pay them.

That was a problem to get that coin in their hands,

when due, without first losing it to the bandits.

Or and usually through in the process they'd kill somebody to get it.

O.- Did you lose a payroll yourself at anytime?

H.- No, strange to say, our company never did lose a payroll.

We had two or three holdups of isolated camps and lost two or three men that way.

But I don't recall now that a single payroll was taken from our company.

Some of them were rather large.

Some of them would be in twenty thousands and thirty thousand pesos.

There's one or two companies down there, there--might've been a little inside work,

I don't know, it certainly sounded like inside information the bandits got

anyway.

Because there wasn't hardly a week that passed they didn't

lose a payroll, and maybe one or two men with it.

O.- What special precautions did the Texas Company take?

H.- Well, we didn't take any particularly until

1920, well about 1921, I think that same summer that I went down there.

There was a man by the name of Harry Lawson that came down there from Lincoln, Nebraska.

And he said there ain't any sense in these oil companies losing payrolls and losing

men through fights with these bandits every week.

And if I could just get one contract, I'd bring some equipment down here.

The war was over, World War I.

I could bring some equipment down here and deliver these payrolls by

airplane and you wouldn't lose a nickel, no bandit loss at all, and save a lot of lives.

Well, I said, "You sit down there and write out your contract. I'll

sign the contract with you if you'll make one."

So he did and he brought down two airplanes, two old Lincoln standards with Hesso motors.

One part of the contract was that

Lawson would not assume responsibility for delivery of the payroll itself.

In other words, if there should be some bandit action and should lose it,

why it's going to be the company's loss.

Therefore, the company had the right to send a man along with

each payroll as it was delivered out in the field.

Now there were two fields in Mexico at that time.

One up the river up near, up above Panuco.

And the other one was down on what's today known as the Golden Lane,

down near Tepitete and points south thereof.

And that's 75 miles south of Tampico.

No road down there.

You had to take it by boat through Lake Tamiagua or by airplane.

Anyway a part of Lawson's contract was that the company should have the right to send a

representative along with each delivery

of cash.

Well, I got so that I usually went myself because I liked to ride in an airplane.

And I'd just take advantage of that as an opportunity to go down in the field,

rather than spending a week going down there and back in a boat.

And so I went along with the cash nearly,

not always but frequently on the trips to the lower country to Tepitete and Aqua Dulce.

And as far down as Tuspan.

O.- Well, that was the inauguration of the airplane into the--

H.- Well in less than a month after I signed the first contract that Lawson made with anybody,

everybody was delivering by airplane.

Everybody signed up right away then.

And he then incorporated his line as the

Mexican Aviation Corporation which exists today, which is an operating company today.

And in addition to delivering payrolls he delivered regular,

you might say a transportation passenger service between, and freight, between Tuspan, Tampico,

Ebanol, Paunco and Mexico City and Brownsville.

And after he started that and did a regular passenger business, commercial

passenger business, why the Pan-American

Petroleum, no Pan-American Airlines acquired that as the first operating unit of their system.

And they own it today. And it was already

profitable in bringing in some cash and that's the reason they wanted it, I suppose.

And they bought it as the first operating unit.

In other words, they traded Pan-Am stock for Mexicana Aviation stock.

I think all of the original people that--well,

except Wilbur Morrison, he's the only one I know of, I know personally that's still alive.

He's vice-president and manager and lives at Miami, Florida.

I think all the balance of them are dead.

O.- Were there any conflicts between your employees and the Mexican people?

H.- No, no conflicts that I know of.

O.- They got along pretty well together?

H.- Yes.

O.- This was long before the expropriation.

H.- Oh, we got

involved in two or three lawsuits down there over contracts made by Judge R. E. Brooks.

And we lost out on one lawsuit brought by the Silva Estate. Silva won the suit.

It was tried in San Antonio, tried by agreement.

It wasn't tried in Mexican courts, it was tried in the United States courts.

But the Silvas won. So rather than pay the Silvas in cash,

the assessment or whatever they won in the suit,

they said, "There's the property, you can have it."

Production was down then to less than 200 barrels a day.

That was before the expropriation, about six months, I guess, less than that.

Anyhow we lost in that suit to the Silvas.

So instead of paying in cash, the Silva's agreed to take the physical properties

which included a refinery at Tampico,

or rather a topping plant that wasn't worth a damn unless you had oil to keep it going.

And some production, some physical properties.

So the Silva crowd agreed to take it.

Well, they hadn't anymore than taken it until

they nationalized petroleum in Mexico and took it away from Silva, the government did.

So Captain Rieber got up at the meeting, he was chairman of the board and he says,

the stockholders meeting, in April he said,

"If you gentle-, if you stockholders want to believe that we was smart enough to get out of

Mexico just ahead of the expropriation, why we're perfectly happy for you to

carry that in your mind.

Wasn't any, we got out because we lost it in a lawsuit. That's the reason we got out."

O.- How well do you know Captain Rieber?

H.- Oh, I knew him first in Port Arthur sometime in 1905.

So I've know him nearly fifty years.

O.- Do you know any good stories about him?

H.- Oh, hell yes.

Some of them he won't admit are true, but I know lots of good stories about old Rieber.

I can remember when he was, I believe he was head of Texas Company's marine department,

and he was also head of the export sales during national prohibition.

Well, being head of the marine department,

he had a way of getting foreign liquors into Port Arthur that anybody else in the marine department,

or anybody else connected with the company may not have that facility.

But the law caught him down there at Port Arthur one time.

And they didn't catch him but somebody framed up on him and made him think that the revenue

authorities were on his trail for some imported liquor that he had brought in to Port Arthur.

And they certainly made him uncomfortable for him for oh, nearly a year.

And letting rumors get back to him someway that

what they were going to do to him for violating the prohibition act.

And he sure did suffer for awhile with that.

But he finally, I think he finally woke up

to it, that somebody was just having a lot of fun with him.

O.-

Any other stories?

H.- I haven't got many stories.

Some of 'em are amusing to me now.

They wouldn't be so amusing or be so interesting to

many others because they don't know some of the details, background.

O.- You came back to this country from Mexico in 1927 then.

H.- Yes, when in 1926 it was, the Texas Company had a--I

wouldn't say a row--but there was some fuss in the management in New York.

Judge Beaty had been president of the company.

And it seemed that he and R. C. Holmes--R. C. Holmes was president

and Amos L. Beaty was chairman of the board--that was it in 1925, let's say.

Well, apparently

their duties weren't drawn out, weren't spelled out on paper.

And Beaty was handling matters that Holmes felt that he should handle, and vice versa.

Holmes was reaching over and doing some of and taking responsibility for some of the company's

business that Beaty thought he should handle as chairman of the board.

Anyway they weren't getting along, they were pulling apart.

And I wasn't present of course.

I was down in Tampico.

But the rumor goes that, has it that

Beaty and Holmes checked it up to the board at an annual meeting and said,

"Now one or the other of us can stay and the other's going to go. You gentlemen make up

your mind which one of us you want to keep. If it's Holmes, well, Holmes will run the

show until you make some other arrangement. And if you keep Beaty, why, Holmes will get out."

So the board decided they couldn't get along without Homes, because Beaty

was more or less--he had come up from a lawyer.

He had been chief general counsel for the company before he was chairman of the board.

Anyway, Beaty tendered his resignation, got out very gracefully and Holmes took over.

Well, immediately Holmes made some changes, and one was in the pipeline end of it.

And he just wired me that I'd been elected president of the

pipeline company and to report at Houston at once, which I did.

That was in March, 1926.

Well, after that, why, you see I stayed on then until through May, 1951.

But as in charge--as president and general manager of the Texas Pipeline Company, organized in my

period of activity, I organized and, several other job, partially owned

companies.

You see, the Texas Company is 100% owned.

They own 100% of the shares of stock of Texas Pipeline Company.

But there are, one, two, three, four--must be that many that don't exist anymore.

There are half a dozen or more companies that are almost as big as the Texas Pipeline Company

that were organized as partly owned, partially owned companies.

In other words, others were taken in as partners, but the Texas Company agreed to

manage and operate and supply the management in the operations of these companies.

Well, there was four or five of those were major companies in existence at the time I left

active service and was put on leave of absence to serve the United States Government in building the

so-called Big Inch, and Little Big Inch Pipelines from

the Gulf Coast to New York harbor during the World War II.

And shortly after that was over and had been operated for a year or two,

I had returned to Houston.

And was giving my attention to the Texas Pipeline and these other jointly owned lines

again when they decided to go through with the Trans-Arabian project, which is the biggest--well

at that time was the largest--diameter oil pipe, crude oil pipeline ever constructed

from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, about 1200 miles.

O.- I'd like to talk-

H.- So I went--I moved my head--I was relieved of my duties as president of

the Texas Pipeline Company and these other, president and manager and of these other

jointly owned companies that I could give my entire attention to the Trans-Arabian job.

And I moved from Houston to San Francisco because it was started

by the, well because the Arabian-American oil companies had its offices in San Francisco.

And the Standard Oil of California, the then other 50% partner had its offices in San Francisco.

And San Francisco is a nice place to live, and it's just as close to Arabia as New York is.

And so I moved to San Francisco in 1947.

O.- 1947. Well between 1926 and 1947, you were living chiefly in Houston?

H.- Yes. Well, yes. That's correct.

O.- Yes. And between that time and the

Big Inch, Little Inch jobs, what other jobs did you have? Did you build any other pipelines?

H.- Well the Big Inch and Little Inch were built in 1944, in 1942 to 1943.

O.- Yes.

H.- Part of 1944, I left them in the middle, in the summer of 1944.

That is, I was no longer responsible after that for the Big Inch and Little Inch.

O.- Could you tell me something about the problems then that you encountered

in building those two pipelines?

H.- Well, there wasn't much problem to it except

the problem as you usually have in all government sponsored work.

The job was really done by the Petroleum Administration, which was under Secretary Ickes'

responsibility, Secretary of Interior, Ickes, Harold L. Ickes.

Now the money was supplied by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

You see, when the war broke out in the fall of 1901, '41, December, 1941,

the government began to requisition and take over tank ships belonging to the oil companies.

They first, took as few as they could, but finally took so many it was hampering the

oil companies in moving products and crude from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic seaboard.

So then

they wanted some more.

Oh, in that time, why, the oil companies began to decide they

would have to build a pipeline to the Atlantic seaboard.

And before they got started, however, the government wanted some more tank ships.

And they came along to the oil companies and said,

"Here, if we're going to requisition some more tank ships, we realize that if we do that,

we'll force you to build a pipeline or something to the Atlantic seaboard.

You've got to move the oil up there someway, to meet civilian as well as military demands.

Now you ship by tank car or anyway you want to, in the meantime, until you build yourself a pipeline.

Anyway you want to ship, you ship it.

Take the average cost to you, of moving in your own tankers,

products and crude oil in the month of August, 1940, 1941.

And we will pay you the increment, additional cost of moving in any

other way you have to move it, by tank car or get it up there somehow.

That's a subsidy we'll pay you.

We'll deduct your cost from whatever it cost you and pay you the balance.

Well, it was costing, I think, better than 80 cents a barrel at that time.

I can't remember now the figures.

Well, the government says, within less than a month they said,

"We're going to build a pipeline,

and we're going to force you to move all that, that pipeline will hold to the Atlantic seaboard

through the pipeline. We're going to charge you sixty cents a barrel or sixty five cents a barrel,

I've forgotten what. We haven't got anybody in the govern- ment that knows anything about pipelines.

You've already--you're going to build a pipeline anyhow. You projected a pipeline. You were going

to build one. We'll just take that. We'll save you the job of financing and the government

will build it itself and operate itself. And charge you an arbitrary sixty cents a barrel,

or sixty five cents, I've forgotten now what it is. And that'll be your cost of moving up here.

And whatever your cost was in August, why you'll get the difference in, in what do you call it?".

O.- Subsidy.. H.- Subsidy. Well Ickes then went

to Jesse Jones, who was head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, said, "The government wants

to build this line. It's going to cost,"--what did it cost? I've forgotten now, "two lines we want

to build." Well, they didn't do it all at once; it was in three different, four different moves, they

do line. First they were going to--they went at it by steps. The first step was to build half of the

crude line to Norris City, Pennsylvania--Norris City, Illinois. There take it out of the pipe-

line, put it on tank cars. That'd save half a tank car haul anyway, and half of the tank cars. There

wasn't enough tank cars to haul all the oil. Then they decided to build it, extend it from Norris

City on to Newark, New Jersey. That was the crude oil. The products line was handled the same way.

It started at the refineries on the Gulf Coast and ended at a place in Indiana--I can't think of the

name of the place, where it was taken off. It was to be taken off of the pipeline and put on tank

cars, to save half the tank car rate on products. But that same thing happened there. We just kept

going from that point in Indiana went right on to Newark with it. We never did ship anything from

that point--oh, what's the name of it, I can't think of it now. I know there was a lot of scandal

in the paper about it at the time because they said we hadn't stopped our pipeline. And we were

going on into Newark with it. We had two companies that were opposing the thing that had production,

that they supplied our line at Ohio and at Chicago, the Standard of Indiana, and the Allied

Oil Company. They opposed it because they weren't supplying out of the Gulf Coast. Anyway, we

finished both lines, finished one line in August, 1942, and the other one about a month later. And

by April or Hay, 1943, the government had saved enough in subsidies over what it actually cost to

pay both lines out. What was the V-J Day?. O.- In 1945..

H.- That's when both lines shut down.. O.- Yes, September 2, 1945..

H.- Well, my recollection is something like three hundred million dollars saving in subsidies of

cost over what it would have been if they'd paid for transportation some other way. Now,

in addition, the government had no further use for those lines. They sold it to the Texas

Eastern Transportation Company for gas lines. And got every damn cent they put into it..

O.- Why do you call them Big Inch and Little Inch?.

H.- Well, that was done by newspaper writers. Years ago, any pipe bigger than, let's say,

ten inches in diameter was called big inch pipe. Any pipe ten inch or less, ten inch and eight inch

and six inch, any other size was called little inch pipe. And that, that expression was used

commonly among workmen.. O.- Yes..

H.- Now when the newspaper writers began to make stories about the governments' two lines, they

heard these expressions and they began immediately to dub the twenty-four inch crude line as the Big

Inch, because it was such a large line. Nobody believed that you could move more than one grade

of crude oil through one single line at once, and keep it segregated as crude oil. In other words

it's bound to mix up somewhere in that line 1300 miles long, why, somewhere it would mix. But those

who advocated it, even the oil companies, decided that if it didn't lose too much speed, kept it at

a velocity of 4 miles an hour or more, it wouldn't mix. It would shove itself out you know. As it

goes down in a sag, why, one grade of oil would shove out the other one ahead of it, without the

necessity of putting in slugs of water, which were in batches to keep one grade from mixing

with the other. See, some grades of crude oil--it depends on what you're going to make of the crude,

whether you're going to make lubricating stocks, or whether you're going to run it to asphalt,

or what--some grades are suitable for one thing, some suitable for others. So the refineries are

rather particular in getting the particular crude that they buy because they bought it for a certain

purpose. Some haven't got refinery equipment to run profitably some grades of crude. So they're

very particular. They want to get the identical oil that they bought. And they didn't believe

you could do that in a line so big in diameter as 24 inch. And it remained for us to prove that by

actual proof of it, which we did. And I remember the products line. The government wouldn't ship

any natural gasoline through that line for awhile. And that was the big product on the Gulf Coast and

what they needed worst on the Atlantic seaborad. So they said, "We can't afford to lose one gallon

of that aviation gasoline." And we said, "We won't lose one gallon for you." Well, we'd rather have

it in tank cars and pay the extra cost of freight because we want to get up to there,

we want to get every gallon. And we know what we can do in tank cars, but we don't know what you

can do with your damn old pipelines." So we says, "Let us try a batch of it, from Philadelphia, from

Sinclair Plant." And, "All right, here's a hundred thousand barrels, try that." So we didn't lose

any. And sure enough when we got through, we moved several million barrels of natural gas. Finally

they let us move it all. But we moved several million barrels of natural gasoline from the Gulf

Coast Refineries to the Atlantic seaboard, and delivered it back to the government up there. And

we delivered more natural gasoline in Newark, New Jersey than we received in Beaumont, Port Arthur,

and Houston, Baytown. Now that sounds impossible, it is impossible. The whole answer is this:

that we were able to by a little fanagling we mixed some house brand with aviation gasoline

somewhere along the route. And were able to convince inspectors, government inspectors at

Newark that it was all natural gasoline, it was all aviation gasoline. So that worked out all

right too. We saved the government lots of money.. O.- How big was the Little Inch?.

H.- Twenty inch.. O.- Twenty?.

H.- Twenty inch diameter, yes.. O.- How far back does that expression

big inch go? How early did you--. H.- I didn't hear it, I've heard

it all my life, big inch pipe. O.- Yes, or little inch, un-huh..

H.- But it wasn't generally used prior to those two lines.

O.- Yeh. Well, I'd like to know something about your operation in the Trans-Iranian

pipeline company.. H.- Trans-Arabian.

O.- Arabian, I'm sorry. H.- Anglo-Iranian is in Iran

only. The Persian Gulf confuses people because they figure that Persian Gulf over there, you

might as well say, it's just the same confusion as the Gulf of Mexico is on this side of the world.

O.- Yes sir.. H.- The Gulf of Mexico doesn't

mean that Mexico owns the Gulf.. O.- Yes.

H.- And the Persian Gulf doesn't mean that Persia owns the Gulf, the Persian Gulf either, or Iran.

Well the Arabian-American Oil Company dates back to about 1929 or '30. At that time the Texas

Company had already established and was supplying a big civilian market in the Pacific. The Standard

Oil Company of California, about the same size as the Texas Company, had no market in the Pacific.

The only market they had was in Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands. But all the balance of the

Pacific, the Phillippine Islands, Australia, and Indonesia, and all of those markets,

they had no part, not Cal out there. They wanted to send Cal out there. Well, Kingsbury, who was

then president of the Standard of California, and Rieber, who was head of the Texas Company, they

got together and they decided that inasmuch as the Texas Company already had a market for products

and the Standard of Cal had no market, and the Standard of Cal has a prospect of developing a lot

of crude oil production from Indonesian properties and from Saudi, no, from Bahrein Islands in the

Persian Gulf and other points, and Texas Company had no leases at all, that they could make a

trade. They could reach a trade agreement, so they did. Without changing any money, the Texas Company

acquired half of Standard's interests in leases in Indonesia and in Persian Gulf. And the Standard of

Cal acquired half of the Texas Company's interest in market for products in those countries. So

they formed what they called the Cal-Arabian Oil Company, fifty-fifty, to exploit production on,

in leases in, or concessions in the Persian Gulf, and in Indonesia, what's now Indonesia. It wasn't

Indonesia then, what is now Indonesia; New Guinea, Java, Sumatra, and some of those other islands.

And on a condition that when conditions justify, in other words when they had enough production,

the new company, Cal-Arabian or some other company jointly owned, would drill the pipeline from the

Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. That cuts off that Arabian Peninsula, seventy five hundred miles

around there. That's a long haul for oil. It's economically unsound to try to haul oil that far,

unnecessarily. So in 1946, I was placed on leave of absence. And Johnny Suman,

who you mentioned--he was on the Standard' board then--and he says, "On one condition:

that you send this guy, that little son-of-a-bitch Hull down there, up there and let him build this

pipeline." So the company said, "That's all right. We don't use him very much. He'll be

retired in a few years anyhow. He' just back off the Big Inch and we can spare him." So in 1946,

I was shifted over there to the Trans-Arabian pipeline in charge of that Now, before Texas and

Standard of California got very far, they began to look at their hole cards. "What are we going

to have to pour into this in money in 1946, '7, '8, and '9? How much is that pipeline going to

cost? Two hundred and thirty or forty million. And how much we going to have to spend in development?

We got to build a refinery at Rastanura and where we going to get all this money? Well,

we're going to." And they finally--The Standard of New Jersey, and the Socony Vacuum had each been

wanting to get in on the Arabian, In the meantime they'd taken on the Arabian possessions. And the

Standard of New Jersey and the Socony Vacuum says, "Gee, there ought to be some way for us to get in

this over there. All we've got's some contracts to buy oil from Anglo-Iranian," And today those

contracts would be no good at all. But at that time that was where they were going to get their

crude. "And we don't want to have to buy all our crude. Isn't there someway for us to get in? Let's

see if we can't buy in with this outfit." So they sat down with the Texas Company and the Standard

of Cal, and sure enough, it was more profitable to the Texas Company and the Standard of Cal to

sell 20% each to these other fellows, and let them carry 407o of the load, no 30% of the load

jointly than for each to carry 50% of the load jointly in the future. Because it'd take such

an enormous amount of capital. They've already got markets established through the Standard

Vacuum Oil Company in Europe particularly. And so they sold to the Standard of New Jersey and

the Socony Vacuum each, between the two of them 40%, They finally agreed that the Socony Vacuum

goes along with 10% interest, and the Standard of New Jersey 30% interest. So they changed the name

to the Arabian-American Oil Company, And that is owned, and so is the Trans-Arabian pipeline, 30%

by Texas, 30% by California, 30% by Esso Standard, and 10% by Socony Vacuum. Works all right too,.

O.- Well, you must have had a great number of special problems there in laying a line..

H.- Well, they're mostly political, and problems due to peculiarities of the laws and customs.

O.- I see a section of that pipe apparently here, before me..

H.- Yes, that's part of the thirty inch. O.- The thirty inch?.

H.- Yes. You may ask why do you have half of it thirty and half of it larger, thirty one inch

diameter. There's only one reason for that. That is we took the thirty inch and stuck one joint

into the well. Ocean freight Is charged by the square feet of spacing, not by the weight, but

by square feet. A single joint of thirty inch pipe does not take up forty pounds to the cubic foot,

so we take thirty inch pipe and shove it inside the thirty one. And the effect is that we save

half the ocean freight. Because even a thirty one and a thirty inch just barely does take up

thirty pounds, forty pounds per cubic foot. And that's what we had to pay for space tonnage rate.

O.- Yes.. H.- So we saved about seven and

a half million dollars in ocean freight.. O.- That's an interesting

story. Who thought of that one?. H.- Well, we thought of It of course. But the

reason it hadn't been done heretofore is because nobody had any in their ship for pipe that big.

O.- Yes.. H.- Now everybody shipped it in pipes, and

over there done the same thing. The Iraq Petroleum just finished a thirty, thirty two inch line from

Kakuk (?) down to Tripoli--Banneas they call it, Banneas, Syria. Then do the same thing, they made

half of theirs thirty and half thirty two inch.. O.- Well, when did you finish

your contract there?. H.- Well, I agreed to stay with that till

it was finished. Then we loaded the first boat full of crude oil in December, 1950. There was

15 months where we shut down because we couldn't get export licenses from the U. S. Department

of Commerce. Don't know why, they never have explained it. They just shut us down and wouldn't

give us any license. But I agreed to stay on as long as my health was good until that was finished

and operating. And so when it started operating in December, 1950, I went back to San Francisco.

And I stayed there just a few more months until my retirement should have occurred in 1949. Yes,

in June 1st, '49. But I stayed on till June 1st, '51, when I left the company because I retired..

O.- Well, a few questions more I'd like to ask. First of all, if you had it to do over again,

would you go this same route? Through A. & M., to pipelining and so on..

H.- Well, of course there would be certain things available to me in the future,

that were not available in the past. I believe I would take a little different course at A. &

M. So far as the pipelines's considered, why I enjoyed it. It was interesting. And I don't

know if I had to do it over again that I would change a bit in my so-called work to be done,

or work done, because I enjoyed it all. Wouldn't be any way to improve on that, that I know of..

O.- Well, you're definitely a pioneer in the laying of pipeline?.

H.- Yes. In other words, anything that's in use today, I tried it first..

O.- Yes. Did you make any inventions yourself along the way?.

H.- Oh, a few. But things that were invented, I assigned immediately to the company and they asked

for the patents on it.. O.- Yes.

H.- Some of it's patented in my name. I never owned any royalty, don't retain any royalty.

O.- All went to the company?. H.- Yes. When you sign an application for

employment, you agree that if you patent anything that's useful in the industry you agree right then

and there to assign your rights to the company. After all the company is going to pay your time,

they're paying you. If you make any mistakes, it's their cost, so if you make anything that isn't a

mistake, they'll profit by it. It's fair enough.. O.- Is that standard practice?.

H.- Yes. It is among the larger companies.. O.- Yes..

H.- Now in the past and probably in the future, it has been a common practice for somebody to

create something that has value, patentable value to just quit, "What the hell's the use of

staying with a fly by night oil company? Might as well start a business of my own," And quit,

get a patent on blowout preventor, for instance. Look at Jim Ambercrobbie. He was of a creative

mind and he got a lot of patents. He patented the blowout preventor and he quit. I forgot

what he was doing. He was working for some small company. He just quit and went into

business for himself. He made millions.. O.- Well, before we leave the recording

I'd like to ask you something about that Texas Club you lived in in Beaumont..

H.- Well, the Texas Club was owned and operated by Mr. and Mrs, T. J. Donohoe. Mr, Donohoe was at

that time executive vice--he was functioning as executive vice-president of the company,

and to pro- vide a decent place to live, he and Mrs, Donohoe kindly agreed to lease or rent a

large building, larger than they needed out on Calder Avenue. And Mrs. Donohoe

agreed to operate a dining room and, for the accommodation of Mr. Cullinan, Fred Freeman,

Ide McFarland, Guy Carroll, Ambrose Donohoe Jr., and a few others who really used the

Texas Club as a home. And Mrs. Donohoe fed and took care of us. Well, in the fall of 1905 I was

living there with some of the other boys and Adrian, no John Melether, came to Beaumont,

was sent there by Arnold Schaet to get a little first hand information and a little experience

in the oil industry. John was going into the export end of the business in, with headquarters

in New York. And I was appointed more or less as glad-hand artist to welcome John to Port Arthur.

And I didn't know what else to do with him so I took him up to T. J. Donohoe's Texaco Club

for dinner. And then we got to deciding where is John going to board while he lives in Port Arthur,

Beaumont. We could have taken him to the Crosby House, I suppose, or the Oaks Hotel,

but we began to see if we couldn't find room for him in the Club, and decided to put him in the

room with Ambrose Donohoe, who was rooming there, for an extra bed, So we went up to Ambrose's room

and up to that time I had never seen any men's under- wear other than the old long-handle type

coming down to the ankle, worn in the summer or winter. So if they wore any underclothes at all,

they wore long ones, covered the leg all the way down to the ankle. Well, John sat there on

his bed in Ambrose Donohoe's room and began to disrobe. And I noticed he had on some B.V.D.'s,

the first ones I'd ever seen. And I was, I was terribly mortified to have been instrumental in

bringing this Italian--you know, Bill, he's part of the, what do you call it? The--.

O.- The royalty? H.- The royal family

of Italy. They come over here and wear short drawers. I put him as a roommate with Ambrose

Donohoe. I didn't know what to do. I was so---. I'll never forget my reaction at having seen him,

the first pair, my first pair of B.V.D.'s that I ever saw or ever heard of, he was wearing 'em..

O.- What'd you say?. H.- I don't recall what remark

I may have made at the time. But I felt that I was responsible for having parked in there with

Ambrose Donohoe, a foreigner, who, with a pair of short drawers on, I didn't know what to think,.

O.- Well, sir, we've come to the end of this tape. Thank you very much. You've been

very patient and kind with your information.. H.- Well, thank you, Mr. Owens. end of tape.

Burt E. Hull Interview - Burt E. Hull Interview [part 5 of 6]

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