Sioux City Sunday Journal April 7, 1929: Page X-9
OIL DIPLOMAT ARRIVES IN U.S.
Sir Henri Deterding Is Working for Control of Production
New York.—(AP)—The rapidly forming league of oil nations, designed to check overproduction of oil through-out the world, has revealed brief flashes of a tireless personality, Sir Henri Deterding.
American leaders of the oil Industry want to keep production in 1929 to the 1928 level of 897,816,793 barrels, or a daily average of 2,453,051 barrels. Sir Henri, who early this month signed a peace treaty with the Russian Oil Products company providing for co-operation and marketing instead of cutthroat competition, came to New York to assist efforts toward similar co-operation In the western hemisphere.
Short, stocky and 65 years old, Sir Henri Deterding dominates the Royal Dutch Shell’s worldwide or-ganization and is the master diplomat of oildom.
He was the son of an obscure Amsterdam sea captain, and there Is nothing In his whole extraordinary record to show that he ever received any family inheritance except a vigorous constitution and a swiftly moving brain. The first thing one is likely to notice about Sir Henri is an oriental swarthiness of skin and a pair of alert, black eyes.
Started as Bank Messenger.
He left public school and went to work as a bank messenger in Amsterdam. He was promoted, step by step, to a chief clerkship and that was enough banking. He did what many a Holland boy was doing at that period and started for the far east. As agent for The Netherlands Trading company he arrived in the East Indies In 1886.
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