The nation . h). Adeal was made with the Soviet Unionto get oil in exchange for was nothing novel in had been selling the SovietUnion sugar for three years — $200,-000,000 worth. This had never alarm-ed Washington. Nor had similar So-viet oil deals with at least threeother Latin American countriesaroused concern in Washington. IN MAY, the Cuban governmentbroke the service-station monopolyof Esso, Texaco and British-DutchShell, making it possible for retailoutlets to buy gasoline and oil fromany source. A further thorn-in-the-flesh for the oil companies was thenew money
The nation . h). Adeal was made with the Soviet Unionto get oil in exchange for was nothing novel in had been selling the SovietUnion sugar for three years — $200,-000,000 worth. This had never alarm-ed Washington. Nor had similar So-viet oil deals with at least threeother Latin American countriesaroused concern in Washington. IN MAY, the Cuban governmentbroke the service-station monopolyof Esso, Texaco and British-DutchShell, making it possible for retailoutlets to buy gasoline and oil fromany source. A further thorn-in-the-flesh for the oil companies was thenew money-exchange control. Thecompanies had been bringing in oil,refining it, selling it to Cuban con-sumers, then changing the proceedsinto dollars. Now exchange permitsto the tune of more than $60,000,-000 were held up. The next tangle came with the re-fusal by the companies to obeyCubas order to process Soviet order seemed like a high-handedCuban move. But Cuba contendsthat under its 1938 petroleum law. Drawing by Bfirger (passed long before Castros day),the oil companies obligated them-selves to refine any government oil companies interpreted theobligation to mean only that theymust refine oil produced in halted shipments of crude,and by June supplies were danger-ously low. To prevent economic dis-aster, the government intervenedand undertook to run the refineries. Will Cuba win the battle of oil?Operating the refineries offers noserious difficulty: many trainedCubans as well as Mexican andSoviet technicians are available. Howabout supplies of crude? Since Brit-ish and American corporations con-trol most of the oil of the freeworld, Cuba must rely chiefly onSoviet and Romanian oil. This, be-cause of barter arrangements, is farcheaper than American oil. The mainproblem is transportation. There areabout five hundred idle tankers inthe world, many of them independ-ent, and if Cuba can plank downdollars on the barrelhead, it can getthe tankers needed. So c
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