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Show 11 .1 POT IIOMK ; I i Ch. vi'niii', Wyoming - National d-t-ti-.f in time of war was the basb: iil.-a of the ea- of the Teapot Dome' nav il oil re.-erve. This wm brought oat clcrirl y in! the depositional evidence of Rear. Admiral .Inlin K". kobln.son intrdue-v by tin- licfi iisi; In the U. S. nistr'at' le'irl :n vie governm -n' 's suit to a'l-niil a'l-niil the lease. 1 A'hn.'al Robinson, then attach'- 1 li Hi : olliee of Mi- S-iretary of the Nuvy iieiihy, had many eonfereneei. h.- -aid. vlth R'-cretary of the Interior Inter-ior fa: I .-.rid Secretary of the N ivy Dei by '.latlve to leading T-a ,ol I'onie : r., according to his tei'i-n.ony. tei'i-n.ony. he was chiefly instrumental iti foi-niilating the plans on which the leiMe va4 made. Ilia sole motive in urging the lease ! he d. .-tared, was to give the nation i'.n adeq.iu.te oil reserve along the ,uuta of the Atlantic and the Gulf ;.,f Mexico lo serve the navy in war time. While the lea.se was being considered, con-sidered, he insisted that it include illie building o fa pipe-line and coast- I al oil reserve stations. i j : "Since the great war," said Ad-: : miral Koblnson, "Kngland has spent ,$14.0(10.000 in establishing oil re- serve ..talions for its navy throughout through-out the British empire. Japan has 'spent 30,000,000 yen in a similar enterprise. France, which has a ze-' ze-' ro output of oil, holds constantly 'available for naval purposes all the oil ci curiiir. rcial companies within i ,-,it.-; Iia'v maintains a naval . 1 erve by indirect taxation. F.Ui t:.v L mted Stat.-s. which has the lai-ge.-t p-.irilcum output of any Ba- tion i:i me world has only recently ju.'.-riakvii a ri"?raa of this kind. u , my i.u-a tiia une whole of i he Teapot Dome- lield bo leased, ihc purps of national defense could not bi- accomplished by tne minor production oi striy wells ano off-set wells along it- borders. To i.iect naval requ.rciueuts. it was necessary nec-essary that the entire held be ';i-i)iislil into production anA a pipe line be built through which the oil could quickly reach the coast. "To transport sulticient oil to meet lie navy's wartime needs from tne j Wyoming fields to the Atlantic sea-1 sea-1 board, a pipe-line, in en-abling tne 1 I niled States to win a war, may be i estimated as the equivalent of a sin-' j B!o transcontiu' -ntal railway. Operation Opera-tion of the Teapot Dome field as a whole and a pipe-line connecting it with t lie Atlantic and the Gulf of Mex'co meant, in my opinion, and ill means, the difference between the possibility of victory and the certainty of defeat." One of the outstanding features oi Admiral Robinson's Uidimony was bis statement that every detail of Hie Teapot Dome lease was threshed out in repeated conferences between himself and Secretary Fall. Secretary Denby and other officials of their departments. de-partments. There was, he said, no itcrecy about it. In carrying out his contract with 'he government, it was brought out S aclair spent ?6, 000, 000 in developing develop-ing Teapot Dome and $20,000,000 more in constructing a pipe-line from the Rockies to the Missouri river, where it conects with other dpe-lines leading to the eastern and oiUhern coasts. He also built at a "ost of more than $1,000,000 a naval oil reserve station at Portsmouth, N. H. He planned, under his contract, to build other stations at Melville, R. I. , on Governor's Island in Boston Harbor, and at Yorktown, Va. But this part of his constructive program was halted by the government's suit to break the Teapot-Dome lease. |