8.1 PD(TC) Instructed to Try for the Water

At the beginning of March 1952, Superior Oil Company informed the IPC that they were going to withdraw from their concessions to search for oil beneath the waters around Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Superior offered these concession agreements to IPC but Groups, the IPC owners, none of them were willing to take up the offer on the basis of an IPC “Group company” arrangement, but they said that they might be interested individually under a different arrangement. They thereby prevented the IPC group as a whole from negotiating for these areas.

Since none of the companies reacted positively to Superior's offer they abandoned the concessions. It soon became clear that the American groups in IPC were not interested in the areas neither on their own nor in partnership with another company. Shell, AIOC (BP) and the French indicated that they might be interested in obtaining concessions. However AIOC and the French would have preferred to postpone discussions with Qatar until after the IPC (Qatar Petroleum Company) had completed their negotiations there concerning their existing Qatar concession on the land. Shell did not agree with such a delay and took the initiative, sending a party out to Doha to investigate the possibility of negotiating a concession; they informed the others of their action the evening before their party flew out to the Gulf. At the same time both AIOC and the French expressed an interest in the Abu Dhabi waters.

8.2 AIOC (D’Arcy or BP) Try for the Water

Cox, the AIOC geologist, believed that of the three areas abandoned by Superior the Abu Dhabi marine areas held the best prospects. But D‘Arcy's enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by two possible drawbacks.

There was the outstanding Saudi Arabian claim to a large piece of Abu Dhabi territory and waters, and if this claim succeeded the concession areas, both marine and on land would be reduced by half, or considerably more if one takes into account the 1949 claim. The second problem was that there were reported to be ever more rumours of growing dissatisfaction among the Bedouin with the rule of Sheikh Shakhbut. In spite of this Geoffrey Stockwell representing D’Arcy (AIOC) visited the Trucial Coast and Qatar in May 1952.