“Oil is not only the sinews of war, it is the blood of peace” The great days of the Comminge RAP in the post-war period

Pierre Angot is in Romania when a pocket of hydrocarbons is discovered at his home in Comminges. In charge for France of the management of the Romanian oil company, he developed the plan to sabotage the installations. Romania then has the largest European stock of hydrocarbons which Germany will hasten to occupy.

In 1940, imprisoned for a while, he had to flee and returned to the country where he was responsible for chairing the RAP. In 1941 he also became president of the newly created SNPA to explore the Aquitain Basin. Pierre Angot is the figure of the republican patriot, in his post he will endeavor to prevent the Germans from benefiting from Comminge's hydrocarbons while preserving the resource for the happy days of a future liberation. Around the wells and degasolining units crowd a whole host of youth resistant to the STO, the gasoline of the RAP fuels the vehicles of the Comminge Resistance, the oil tankers go underground. Pierre Angot did not experience the Liberation; he was deported in 1944 and died in 1945 in a salt mine near Buchenvald. At the RAP, at the Peyrouzet degasolining plant, the oil tankers paid a heavy price, at the time of the Liberation then on the front and all the way to Berlin.
In January 1945, in French cinemas, Saint-Marcet embodies the hope of “New Departures”, after so much destruction and deprivation. It is the hydrocarbons of Saint-Marcet which allow the restart of essential factories, the ONIA in Toulouse which produces fertilizers for agriculture, the steelworks in Toulouse and Pamiers, and then the gas already supplies Toulouse homes, it lights up the streets and makes cars, trucks, buses and even trains move.

“Oil is not only the sinews of war, it has once again become the blood of peace”

Prospecting continues in our region, in Saint-Girons, Plagne, on the heights of Arbon and Malvezie but also in the Jura, in Savoie. Then, the polls proving unproductive, France turned to its Empire and firstly to the Maghreb. In Morocco, oil slicks were discovered in 48. In Algeria others prospected in vain but there too it was the RAP drillers who discovered the first deposit in the Sahara in 1954. France's supply was then compromised by the Middle East crisis, hydrocarbons no longer reach us, pipelines are blown, the Suez Canal is closed. In France the roads are deserted. Once again the discoveries of Comminge oil tankers represent hope for the country. In the press, in cinema news, on television and even in children's literature, the figure of the driller imposes itself and populates our new westerns as in 1953 with “the wages of fear”.

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“A Republican miracle”: the genesis of Saint-Marcet gas, the first deposit discovered in France on July 14, 1939

At the beginning of the 1950s, oil research structures were either foreign private companies or mixed economy companies, and then there was RAP, which seemed like a paradox. The company is a State establishment which alone produces and exploits the hydrocarbons it finds, only the RAP is profitable, only the RAP has its own financial means to finance oil research, its own and that of its competitors. The factory built in Boussens was in 1949 the most powerful in Europe. Not far from us, in Lacq near Pau, a deposit is discovered by the SNPA, the gas is saturated with sulfur, it will remain unusable for years before covering all of France's needs on its own. A relief then that in Algeria the war of independence will put an end to France's gas revenue. Comminge drillers continue their world tour, in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In search of black gold, within the RAP but also in other companies such as FOREX or CGG which benefited from the boom brought by the discovery of Saint-Marcet. In Boussens, workers’ towns were built.