Oral History Interview with Stephen E. Van Nostrand, April 20, 1987 Page: 30
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30
that were required just to hold our position in the market-
place. I don't think we ever sold anything (chuckle). We
had contracts for crude oil supply that Jim Voss, together
with our crude marketing people, in the late 1940s and early
1950s had put together. But as documents we put them away
long ago, and operated within what the Japanese were fond
of saying was the "spirit of the arrangement."
The "spirit of the arrangement" was calling for stagger-
ing input of finance, so much so that it attracted the immediate
attention of our shareholders. We were progressing at a
much more rapid rate than they were in a more conservative
operating area here in the United States and in other
European facilities. Everyone became very concerned about
the amount of money that was going to be called for just to
hold our position in the marketplace. Of course, the Japanese
are not conservative. They are excellent planners. Once
they make a plan, they mean to fulfill it, and they pull out
all the stops in order to make very sure that it is fulfilled.
This was the major problem in those days--our conservative
outlook and our seeming greater experience in modern petroleum
technology; and the Japanese's hard, cold, analytical studies
that they were putting together of what the future was going
to require. They couldn't anticipate, and neither could we,
things like the Iranian crisis and the shortage of crude oil,
and that eventually put the brakes on the whole thing. But
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Marcello, Ronald E. & Van Nostrand, Stephen E. Oral History Interview with Stephen E. Van Nostrand, April 20, 1987, book, April 20, 1987; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc306889/m1/32/?q=%22~1%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Oral History Program.