demnifying the property owners, in accordance with the mining laws, for any damages and losses caused by him, and the concessionaire shall have the exclusive right during thirty years to exploit any deposits discovered by him, free of any taxation whatsoever.

Art. 4. Also grant the exclusive right free of taxation to lay pipe lines, and build conduits in order to transport to the railway stations, ports, etc., the oil that might be discovered, and to construct the buildings, depositories, to make the installations and import the necessary machinery and material for refining the crude product of the petroleum wells without any taxation whatever during that period in conformity with Article three of this concession.

Art. 5. The concessionaire on his part obliges himself to procure ample funds and to make not later than next year, the studies and explorations, and shall in due time make the borings to endeavor to demonstrate the existence of crude oil in the country.

Art. 6. Furthermore, during the period of said concession as prolonged by the present act, the National Government shall receive ten per cent of the gross product that the concessionaire may discover and succeed in exploiting. PASSED in the Assembly Chamber of the Legislative Department, National Capitol, San Salvador, on the thirty-first day of July, the year of our Lord, 1919. LUIS REVELO,

President.

J. IGNO. CASTRO,

1st. Pro-Secretary.

FRANCISCO G. CRUZ,

National Palace, San Salvador, 13th of August, 1919.
Let it be executed.

2d. Pro-Secretary.

JORGE MELENDEZ,

Secretary of the Interior and Public Works.

M. T. MOLINA.

ARGENTINA.

CONTENTS.

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE REGARDING LAW FOR PETROLEUM EXPLOITATION.

NOTE. Argentina at present has no law governing petroleum exploitations. In October, 1919, the President of the Republic, by message, called the attention of the Congress to a law just submitted and advising new legislation with regard to the State petroleum workings.

This message was, freely translated, in part as follows:

The importance of the petroleum deposits of Comodore Rivadavia and Plaza Huincul, as also the presumption that there exist in the country other deposits of this valuable fuel, call for and render necessary the adoption of an organic law to prescribe the form in which the State shall carry out the said mineral workings and the manner in which it shall intervene in those which may be started in the future.

There should thus be established: the manner in which these official petrolific workings shall be administered, the fixing of their permanent and their working capital, the form of increasing it and the reserve funds, as also the destination to be given to the special funds to provide for the renewal of working materials. for extraordinary amortizations, surveys, explorations and extensions, as also the application and destination of the profits.

By intensifying the petroleum working, by means of the capital available, an increase in yield would necessarily occur, and in consequence an increase in the receipts, to the amount of which would have to be added the proceeds of the by-products and derivatives obtained from the distillation of the petroleum.

But if the considerable increase which ought to occur from receipts under these headings were still insufficient to place the State workings in a condition to respond efficaciously to the demand for petroleum and its derivatives in the country, it would then be necessary to provide other resources which permit of the development of a more intense action tending to meet those requirements.

520

BOLIVIA.

CONTENTS.

COMPILATION OF MINING LAWS.

PUBLISHED IN 1916.

Article 2. The State enjoys the ownership of all deposits, layers, strata or other beds of inorganic substances, such as * * * petroleum, and other nonmetalliferous substances capable of being used for industrial purposes, whether found in the interior of the earth or on the surface thereof.

Article 6. Whether the surface belongs in private or public ownership, the owner thereof does not lose his right thereto and may enjoy it, except in the event of expropriation; the subsoil which is under the control of the State may, according to circumstances and without any other ground than that of expediency, be abandoned by him to the common enjoyment, ceded to the owner of the soil or transferred to any applicant, by means of a license, subject to provisions to be established.

*

Article 9. In lands of the public domain and in privately owned lands not enclosed, prospecting may be done without license, and excavations and digging shall be permitted. In privately owned lands that are enclosed no prospecting may be done without the permission of the owner or by judicial license on payment of compensation. Prospecting is forbidden in buildings, orchards, and gardens of public or private ownership.

Article 16. Any person in the exercise of his civil rights may obtain one or more claims by means of a single concession for known minerals, and only 30 claims in the case of recently discovered minerals. The claims which form a concession should be grouped together without interruption, so that the adjoining claims shall be united in the whole length of any of its sides.

Article 21. The person who wishes to obtain one or more holdings, will present his request in person or by attorney before the Prefect of the Department, setting forth clearly: 1. His name, residence, and profession; 2. the name which is to be given to the concession; 3. Punto de partida (either point of discovery of a vein, or, probably, point of commencement of survey) which must be shown either outside or inside, according to the case, determining when possible the direction and distance from some other undoubted and fixed point; 4. the number of claims which he wishes to acquire; 5. the mineral region to which the claims belong, indicating whether it is known as such or whether it has to do with a recently discovered district; 6. the names of the adjoining miners, if there are any, and the respective positions of their claims; 7. The

name of the owner of the surface, if in private ownership. (D(decree) of October 28, 1882, 7.)

NOTE: Applications which do not comply clearly with the conditions of art. 7, Regulation of Oct. 28, 1882 and art. 4. of Decree of May 8, 1900 will not be considered until fault is corrected.

The applicant for a mining claim can not be excused from complying with the obligation to set forth clearly the points contained in art. 21 of the Mineral Compilation, summed up in the formulas attached to the circular of August 1, 1911, without which requirement the petition will not be acted upon. (Circular of March 6, 1914.)

According to art. 6 of the law of Dec. 14, 1906 (art. 60 of the compilation) the Prefects are without jurisdiction to alter or change the point of beginning of survey as given by applicant in his first application.

The supreme resolution (Supreme Court decision (?)) of March 9, 1915, declares that the designation of the points or requirements prescribed in the article referred to, may vary. The following is the original text: "It is declared that modifications may be made, before the publication of a mineral petition, which must be published with the first act of the petition or in the order required for the operations of measuring, establishing boundaries, and securing possession."

The meaning of this resolution is understood to be none other than to permit the correction or modification of errors or accidental omissions which refer to the state, residence or professions of the applicants, to the names of the persons, to the owner of the soil, or other similar circumstances; but not to substantial circumstances, such as variation of the characteristic marks of the location of the place, the modification of the point of beginning, the broadening of the limits of the mine requested, etc., to the prejudice of third parties. Article 23. In addition to the requisites to be complied with in filing the petition for a concession of claims, in accordance with Article 21, in petitions for nonmetalliferous inorganic substances, the substance contained in the land applied for shall be clearly set forth and a sample thereof shall be deposited in the museum located at the point and in its absence in the Department, together with a document authorized by the Secretary of the Prefecture in which all the conditions of filing are set forth.

Article 79. Concessions are ad perpetuam, on payment of a license fee of four bolivianos per hectare.