The Happy Hand-Over

Rusting and broken pipelines and stretches of barbed wire litter the sand around the deserted town of Ras Sudr, once a dusty bedroom community for Egyptian and foreign workers at the nearby oilfields. The wells of Ras Sudr produce only 3,000 bbl. of crude a day -a trickle by Middle Eastern standards and only a fraction of the 75,000 bbl. daily pumped out of Abu Rudeis. But the desolate, cactus-covered patch of desert with its huddle of workers' decaying cottages has a considerable symbolic importance. Under the second Sinai accord worked out last summer by Secretary Kissinger, Ras Sudr was scheduled to be the first oilfield in the Sinai from which Israel would withdraw.

Last week Israel formally handed over control of the oilfield to Indonesian officers of the United Nations Emergency Force. Two days after the Israeli pullout, Egypt formally took possession again. Within hours a tanker had been loaded and was under way with a cargo of the first oil from the lost fields of the Sinai to head for Suez in eight years. TIME'S Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn was at Ras Sudr when the oil to Egypt started flowing. His report:

Ras Sudr lies on a dry plain, with the Sinai mountains to the east and, across the Gulf of Suez, Egypt's Red Sea hills barely visible to the west. The town is just 30 miles south of the spot where, according to local tradition, Moses struck the rock and made water gush forth. Instead of striking a rock, Egyptian Minister of Petroleum Ahmed Ezzedin Hilal turned a valve and a jet of black crude spurted across the sand. "God be praised," Hilal said. "I cannot express in words the happiness I feel."

One after another, Egyptian dignitaries took turns opening the valve and sending jets of oil across the sand. Finally, an executive of Mobil Oil -a partner of the Egyptian oil firm that controls the wells -warned: "Better hold off, boys. That stuff is worth ten dollars a barrel."

Nile Drink. After the valve-turning ceremony, Hilal led a motorcade to Ras Sudr's tiny terminal, where the 13,500-ton Egyptian tanker Salaam lay in shallow water offshore. An aide handed a folded Egyptian flag to Abdel Moneim Karamany, the governor of Sinai, who kissed it, fixed it to a rope and hoisted it onto a steel platform. A small crowd of Bedouins and a couple of sheiks watched, intoning "Allahu akbar"(God is great). Hilal and Karamany then stepped into a launch to visit the Salaam and congratulate its crew before the tanker sailed off to Suez.

Like the interim agreement itself, the happy hand-over of Ras Sudr owes much to American help. Experts from several American oil firms, including hard-bitten ex-roughnecks from Texas, had gone to Ras Sudr in October to arrange the turnover on Egypt's behalf. At the signing ceremony, which took place inside a former Israeli compound (a sign on the fence in Hebrew warned of land mines), the Egyptians beamingly approved of the Americans' work. "You have done a great job," said Hilal. "We hope we will see you again in Egypt." Answered Mobil's Cairo manager Ross Sawtelle on behalf of his crewmen: "They have drunk of the water of the Nile and that means they will return."

Apparently sensing that they would eventually have to give up Ras Sudr, the Israelis did almost no maintenance in the eight years they were here. Most of the buildings are without doors or windows. The pipelines have been almost totally destroyed by war or chopped up and run over by heavy equipment.

But there was no evidence of deliberate destruction by the Israelis, and there were even some signs of good will: just before leaving, the Israelis repaired the Ras Sudr mosque. "We can say," summed up Oil Minister Hilal, "that the agreement is being carried out as agreed upon." Next step in carrying out the Sinai accord: on Nov. 30, the Israelis will hand over the much larger oilfields at Abu Rudeis. That transaction is also expected to go smoothly.

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