PETROLEUM TRADE. 217 



An enterprising firm, Messrs. Finlay, Fleming & Co., started 

 a refinery at Rangoon, but it seems that up to 1886 the concern 

 was not very profitable, owing most probably to the high price 

 of the crude oil. After the annexation of Upper Burma a limited 

 liability company under the name of the " Burma Oil Company" with 

 a capital of £120,000 was formed which took over the stock and plant 

 of the refinery, and owing to the lower rates at which the crude 

 oil could now be obtained from the native well owners, business 

 prospered. 



This state of things prevailed until March 1891, when the five 

 years' contract, which the firm had entered into with the native well 

 owners, came to an end, and the latter, apparently tempted by the 

 high price the petroleum had hitherto commanded (see page 215), 

 refused to enter into a new contract on the previous terms. 



In the meantime the Burma Oil Company had energetically 

 pushed on the drilling of wells at Kodoung in the central part of the 

 Yenangyoung oil field, and having succeeded in turning out a larger 

 quantity of oil than was required to supply the refinery in Rangoon, 

 was in the lucky position of being independent of the supply from 

 the native wells. 



The native well owners stubbornly refused to come to terms with 

 the Company, hoping that they would now receive the R25 for 

 which 100 viss of oil had hitherto been sold. But to their intense 

 surprise the price of oil fell on the 1st of April 1891 to R2-12 per 

 100 viss, and they were subsequently only too glad, when another 

 Company, the Yenangyoung Petroleum Company, Limited, offered to 

 take the whole of their production at R4 per 100 viss. Any- 

 body, however, who knew of the conditions of the production, could 

 foretell with certainty, that this new undertaking could not possibly 

 prosper, and after a life of hardly a year it failed, and matters 

 stand now exactly as in April 1891, if not worse, for the native well 

 owners. 



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