Rumania will cease using the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline to transport crude oil from the Persian Gulf en route to Rumania. Pipeline officials today confirmed a report to this effect from Egypt. They said Rumania was a large customer of the pipeline but withdrawal of its business would not be a knock-out blow.
The officials conceded that the pipeline was not currently making a profit but said it was due to the general recession in the oil transport industry which was hitting at the tanker trade too. Some consternation was expressed when the original report came from Egypt oiling Arab boycott officials there who said Rumania’s move was taken “to consolidate relations with Arab states.” Some Israeli officials spoke sorrowfully of Rumania “kowtowing to the boycott.”
Informed sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that this was not, strictly speaking, the case. Rumania simply decided to buy oil from an Arab state cheaper than the oil it had been buying until now from Iran. The Arab state, however, insisted that its oil should not be shipped through the Israeli pipeline but through the Suez Canal, the sources said.
Commerce Minister Haim Barlev raised the issue in talks Thursday with the visiting Rumanian Foreign Trade Minister Nicolae Nicolae, who said he did not know details of the decision but could assure his hosts that Rumania was not surrendering to the Arab boycott. The proof of this. Nicolae said, was his own visit to Israel to sign a new trade agreement. The Rumanian Minister heads a nine-man delegation of trade, agriculture and industries officials.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
