«We all subscribe to the gentlemen's agreement among major oil companies that they will not prospect for oil in international waters—that is to say, outside their own legally and internationally recognized territorial limits. Without observance of this agreement, the possibilities of legal, diplomatic, political and international strife, ranging from scenes of political violence to outright armed confrontation, are only too real. Let us suppose that Nation A—as some countries have already done—claims all rights for all waters a hundred miles offshore from its coasts. Let us further suppose that Nation B comes along and starts drilling thirty miles outside those limits. Then let us suppose that Nation A makes a unilateral decision to extend its offshore limits to a hundred and fifty miles—and don't forget that Peru has claimed two hundred miles as its limits: the subsequent possibilities are too awesome to contemplate.
«Alas, not all are gentlemen. The chairman of the North Hudson Oil Company, Lord Worth, and his entire pestiferous board of directors would have been the first to vehemently deny any suggestion that they were gentlemen, a fact held in almost universal acceptance by their competitors in oil. They would also have denied equally vehemently that they were criminals, a fact that may or may not have been true, but it most certainly is not true now.
«He has, in short, committed two of what should be indictable offenses. 'Should,' I say. The first is unprovable; the second, although an of-fense in moral terms, is not, as yet, strictly illegal.
«The facts of the first—and what I consider much the minor offense—concerns the building of Lord Worth's TLP in Houston. It is no secret in the industry that the plans were stolen—those for the platform from the Mobil Oil Company, those for the legs and anchoring systems from the Chevron Oilfield Research Company. But, as I say, unprovable. It is commonplace for new inventions and developments to occur at two or more places simultaneously, and he can always claim that his design team, working in secret, beat the others to the punch.»