GEO ExPro - The Abu Dhabi Oil Discoveries The Abu Dhabi Oil Discoveries Michael Quentin Morton In the 1930s Abu Dhabi was a poor fishing village on the edge of the desert, but the discovery of oil has revolutionised the Emirate. It is thought to possess the sixth largest proven oil reserves in the world and is now extremely rich. This article appeared in Vol. 8, No. 3 - 2011 Advertisement A seismic party crossing the desert, Abu Dhabi 1971. Source: Iraq Petroleum Company Abu Dhabi is often described as the world’s richest city but in the 1930s the opposite was true. Situated on an island, it was a simple fishing village with a fort. Although the local economy had once prospered on the pearl trade, cultured pearls from Japan destroyed the market for natural ones, ruining the trade and bringing poverty to the population. The rest of the emirate comprised mainly sand, with settlements and date plantations around the oases of Liwa and Al Ain. 1930s and 40s: The First Moves The ruler, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan al Nahyan, was eager to find a good water supply.

He had heard about Major Frank Holmes’ work drilling for water in Bahrain and thought the same might be done on Abu Dhabi island where only brackish water was recovered from shallow pits. He agreed enthusiastically to the British political officer’s suggestion that a water survey should be carried out and a request was duly made to the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), whose partners included the Anglo Persian (renamed Anglo Iranian in 1935) Oil Company, the forerunner of BP. Even so, when Anglo Persian geologist Peter Cox arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1935, he was surprised to find a lukewarm Sheikh Shakhbut: it seemed that the Sheikh was now more interested in oil than water. Shakhbut was well informed about payments that other rulers had received from oil companies, and was keen to discuss an oil concession. On 5th January, 1936 William “Haji” Williamson, on behalf of IPC, obtained a two year option for Abu Dhabi on a down payment of 7,000 rupees and 3,000 rupees a month (approximately £27,000 and £12,000 at today’s values).

IPC created a subsidiary company, Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) (PDTC), to explore the area. Location map of United Arab Emirates and its major oil fields. (from Granier B., Al Suwaidi A.S., Busnardo R., Aziz S.K., Schroeder R. (2003) – “New Insight on the Stratigraphy of the "Upper Thamama" in Offshore Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.)” Carnets de Géologie / Notebooks on Geology, Article 2003/05. Situated on the south-eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, the emirate of Abu Dhabi has a land surface of 67,340 square kilometres, about the same size as West Virginia. Almost 200 islands fall within its territory and the mainland is predominantly desert. The capital city of the same name is also the capital of the seven member United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was formerly known as the Trucial States (or Trucial Coast). Abu Dhabi contains 95% of the oil and 92% of the natural gas resources of the UAE. The first survey of Abu Dhabi began in the same year.

A PDTC survey party visited the Buraimi Oasis and studied the largest and most promising anticline of the region, Jebel Hafit, but everything pointed to future difficulties for oil exploration. Field geologists relied on mapping and plane tabling exposed rock formations and most of the interior of Abu Dhabi was covered in sand; only Jebels Hafit and Dhana and a few coastal outcrops were exposed. The oil company would have to rely on the “new” science of geophysics rather than geology to unlock the secrets of this land, but the technology would not be available until a decade later. Undeterred, PDTC obtained a 75-year concession for the whole territory on 11 January 1939. World War II intervened and exploration was put on hold. Once the war was over gravity surveys were started in 1946 and continued moving inland until 1950, when the going became too difficult for the company’s vehicles because of the huge sand dunes. After a break of three years, these surveys resumed with special equipment, including helicopters.

By now, land transport had improved and crews were able to complete the gravity coverage of Abu Dhabi using vehicles such as Dodge Power Wagons equipped with low profile balloon-tyres. William "Haji" Williamson “Haji” Williamson was an Englishman who had lived for many years in the Middle East and had a good reputation among the sheikhs of the Gulf. He was the guide and interpreter for the first PDTC survey of Abu Dhabi in 1936. Major Frank Holmes was a concession hunter who had helped to obtain oil concessions in Al-Hasa, Bahrain and Kuwait (see “The Emergence of the Arabian Oil Industry,” GEO ExPro, Vol 7, No. 6). Although often cast as rivals in the competition to obtain oil concessions, Haji and Holmes were in fact much of the same ilk: both were individualists who saw the Arab point of view, which sometimes made British officials suspicious of their influence. In the 1930s, both were involved on behalf of PDTC in negotiations for oil concessions with the sheikhs of the Trucial Coast. 1950s: Win Some, Lose Some Murban No.1 Well.

Source: Iraq Petroleum Company Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan al Nahyan (centre), with IPC General Manager C.M. Dalley on his left, after turning the valve at the newly-built oil terminal at Jebel Dhanna to symbolise the first flow of oil, 21 March 1964. Source: IPC One important feature of the Umm Shaif discovery was that it confirmed the presence of oil in the Cretaceous Thamama Group, whereas most of the previous oil strikes in eastern Arabia had been in the Jurassic Arab Zone limestones. Source: S. Elder, The Journal of the Institute of Petroleum vol. 47, p. 310, October 1963 Commander Jacques Cousteau on board his ship, Calypso, which carried out a survey of the sea bed in the Gulf in 1954. Source: BP Archive PDTC began drilling for oil at Ras Sadr in 1950 and Jebel Ali in 1951, but both wells proved dry. PDTC’s focus shifted to western Abu Dhabi but progress was hampered by a boundary dispute with Saudi Arabia.

The Buraimi Dispute, as it was known, closed parts of Abu Dhabi to oil exploration. As a result of this dispute, PDTC was forced to drill the Murban No.1 well several miles off the seismic crest. The well struck traces of light oil and gas at a depth of about 10,000 ft (3,048m) but drilling ended abruptly at a depth below 12,500 ft (3,810m) when the well suddenly blew out with high-pressure sour gas, killing a petroleum engineer and brittling the drill string. The well had to be plugged and abandoned. Analysis indicated that the oil show had in fact come from a Cretaceous rock interval known as the Upper Thamama. The disappointing findings from this well pushed exploration westwards towards the region where the productive Jurassic Arab reservoirs might be found. When arbitration proceedings over the Buraimi Dispute broke down, PDTC continued its drilling programme in Abu Dhabi where two more seismic structures were discovered, Gezira and Shuweihat. Both were drilled but proved dry. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi Marine Areas Ltd. (ADMA) had obtained an off shore concession.

ADMA was jointly owned by British Petroleum and Compagnie Française des Pétroles (later Total). The company brought Jacques Cousteau on his research ship Calypso to the Gulf to map the sea bed geologically. There followed a seismic survey conducted by GSI Ltd. from their vessel mv Sonic, the results of which led to the location of the first test well being selected. In 1958, using a marine drilling platform, the ADMA Enterprise, drilling began on the Umm Shaif field and oil was struck at about 8,755 ft (2,668m). The field, a super-giant about 300 km2 in size, came on stream in 1962, producing oil from the top of the Lower Cretaceous Thamama group (I and II), from the Upper Jurassic Arab D carbonates and Middle Jurassic Araej and Uwainat limestones. This was followed in 1959 by PDTC’s onshore discovery well at Murban No.3. The oil field (now known as Murban-Bab) was delineated by seismic surveys in light dune terrain and was about 450 km2 in size.

Oil came from several porous limestone zones of the Lower Cretaceous Thamama group. The field went on stream in 1964. By 1979 average daily production was 60,270 bopd and by 1980 cumulative production had reached 630 MMbo. In 1962, the company discovered the Bu Hasa field and ADMA followed in 1965 with the discovery of the Zakum offshore field. 1960s and 70s: Facing the Future This photograph was taken in 1970 in the vicinity of Jebel Hafit, where Oligocene and Eocene rocks are visible on the surface. Elsewhere, the range of surface geological work is restricted because the Tertiary rocks are covered by extensive wind-blown sand and mud flats. Early exploration, both onshore and offshore, relied heavily on geophysical surveys to locate potential oilfields. Photo: Nick Lee Another line is fired: Party 19 in the Abu Dhabi desert, 1971.

Party 19 was one of three seismic crews on contract from General Geophysical Company each with about 120 people and 36 vehicles of various kinds, including six mobile shot-hole rigs. In a typical day, about 1,500 shot–holes were drilled and over 1,000 geophones laid out and connected by cables to recording instruments. These geophones and cables were picked up and relocated several times each day. The field data was recorded and processed in a large computer complex in London. Starting in 1960, Party 19 surveyed the Bab and Bu Hasa areas, moved south-eastwards to Asab and subsequently covered most parts of Abu Dhabi. The crews completed operations in 1971 and their equipment was shipped to Saudi Arabia. Source: IPC In the early 1960’s PDTC relinquished much of the Trucial Coast area but retained Abu Dhabi and changed its name to the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC). In 1965 ADPC signed a 50-50 oil-sharing agreement with Sheikh Shakhbut. ADMA agreed the same terms in 1966.

On 6 August 1966, Shakhbut was succeeded by his younger brother, Zayed. In 1971, Sheikh Zayed became president of the newly created UAE and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company was created. In December 1974, the company gained a 60% interest in ADPC and ADMA, which were reincorporated as the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operation and Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Companies. Oil in the UAE Today Abu Dhabi city at night, November 2010. Source: Quentin Morton In addition to the oil fields mentioned, the main producing fields onshore are Asab, Sahil and Shah, and offshore are al-Bunduq, and Abu al-Bukhoosh (ABK). Oil production in the UAE was in the region of 2.3 MMbopd in 2010, and it possesses the sixth largest proven oil reserves in the world; but plans to boost production to 3 MMbopd have not yet materialised. In recent years the focus has turned to gas as increasing domestic consumption for power, desalination and reinjection of gas into oil fields increases demand.

Gas extraction is not without its difficulties, however, as demonstrated by the sour gas project at Shah where the gas is rich in hydrogen sulphide content and is expensive to develop and process. Acknowledgements: Thanks to Alan Heward and Peter Morton for their assistance with this article. Michael Quentin Morton’s father D.M. (“Mike”) Morton was Head of the Geological Department of the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC) between 1961 and 1966. Mike’s biography In the Heart of the Desert is published by Green Mountain Press (ISBN: 095522120X). Advertisement BERA: Issue 5/6 The Oil & Gas Industry: History (Business Reference Services, Library of Congress) Ancient Use of Oil and Gas Oil and gas have played an important role throughout world history. Ancient cultures used crude oil as a substance for binding materials and as a sealant for waterproofing various surfaces. Five thousand years ago, the Summerians used asphalt to inlay mosaics in walls and floors. Mesopotamians used bitumen to line water canals, seal joints in wooden boats and to build roads.

1 By 1500 B.C., techniques for lighting consisted of a censer or fire pan filled with oil made of a certain volatility so that it would burn slowly and not cause uncontrollable flames or explosions. Over time, the wick oil lamp replaced the fire pan using a flammable oil similar to today's kerosene lanterns. 2 The Chinese were the first to discover underground oil deposits in salt wells. 3 The Chinese recognized early on the importance and potential use of oil and gas. Around 500 B.C., ancient Chinese history describes wells over 100 feet deep containing water and natural gas along the Tibetan border. The Chinese constructed extensive bamboo pipelines drawing from the wells in order to transport oil and natural gas, which was used for lighting. By 1500 A.D., the Chinese were exploring and digging wells more than 2,000 feet deep. 4 Issue 5/6: Winter 2005/Spring 2006 Updated July 2013 The Modern Oil and Gas Industry The modern oil and gas industry was born in the late 19th century.

In the early 1800's, merchants built damns that allowed oil to float to the waters' surface in an area within Western Pennsylvania called Oil Creek. 6 A technique using blankets was employed placing blankets in the water, letting them soak with oil, and the oil was then retrieved by wringing out the blankets. The oil was sold for two dollars per gallon. 7 The invention of the kerosene lamp in the mid 1850's led to the establishment of the first U.S. oil company, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company. However, the first major oil company was the Standard Oil Company founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870. Standard Oil built its first oil refinery in Pennsylvania, then later expanded its extensive operations nationwide. After a decade of fierce competition, Standard Oil became the industry's most dominant company controlling 80 percent of the distribution of all principal oil products, in particular kerosene. 8 In 1909 as a result of antitrust laws, federal courts ordered the break up of the Standard Oil Company dividing it up into 34 separate companies. Standard Oil dominated the first two decades of the oil and gas industry, and the U.S.

accounted for more than half of the world's production until around 1950. As the industry became more global in nature, other world markets in Europe, Russia and Asia, began to play a much greater role. New industry giants emerged such as, Shell, Royal Dutch, and Anglo-Persian which later became British Petroleum. Royal Dutch Shell - founded 1907 Anglo-Persian Oil Company - founded 1909 Turkish Petroleum Company - founded 1910 As the oil industry unfolded over several decades, Standard Oil of New Jersey later became Esso, then Exxon, Standard Oil of New York became Mobil, and Standard Oil of California is now Chevron. Along with Royal Dutch Shell, Texaco, Gulf, and British Petroleum (BP), these oil giants became known as the "seven sisters." At the beginning of the 20th century, oil production was dominated by three regions: the U.S., Russia and the Dutch East Indies. However, during the first decade of the 20th century, major efforts were underway to explore and develop oil production in the Middle East region. Oil exploration began in Persia (what is currently Iran) followed by Turkey.

In the late 1930's, the Burgan oilfield was discovered in Kuwait. A decade later, the Ghawar oilfield was then discovered in Saudi Arabia. Ghawar still remains the largest oil field ever discovered. 9 After World War II, joint American and Saudi commercial oil enterprises were formed creating conglomerates, such as Casco (California Arabian Standard Oil Company), Caltex (California Texas Oil Company). Eventually, Esso (Exxon) and Mobil joined the Standard Oil Company of California to form Aramco (Arabian American Oil Company). Global Economic & Political Affairs and the World Oil Market During the 1950's, oil consumption grew at a rate of 7 percent annually. Automobile manufacturing expanded rapidly leading to a dramatic increase in the demand for fuel. As the world economy and the oil and gas industry evolved over time, various political and economic events occurred, in particular wars in the Middle East during the late 1960's and 1970's, which had substantial impacts on the world oil and gas industry.

The economic environment was experiencing a rapid rise in oil consumption and economic projections indicated that oil reserves were equivalent to only sustaining 30 years of production, leading many to fear that the oil resources would be exhausted by 2000. 10 Events within the global political and economic environment have led to periodic world oil shocks. The first oil shock occurred in 1973 as a result of war in the Middle East, specifically the Yom Kippur War. This war and its political effects caused an enormous increase in world oil prices. Oil embargos were also instituted during this time period by the oil exporting countries in the region, reducing world oil production. After the first oil shock, which resulted in real oil supply shortages for countries targeted by the embargo, the industrialized countries established the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 1974. 11 This agency within the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) was made up of over 20 countries including the U.S., Canada, Western Europe and Japan.

To promote cooperation between member countries in reducing dependence on oil through energy conservation and the development of alternative energy sources To set up an information system on the international oil market and establish consultations with oil companies To cooperate with oil producing and consuming countries in efforts to stabilize world energy markets and to ensure fair and effective management of world energy resources To devise and implement plans to address potential major oil crisis and the disruption of world oil supplies The second oil shock occurred in 1979, again causing dramatic increases in world oil prices. This oil shock was the result of the Iranian crisis caused by political and social discontent in Iran, which led to strikes in most sectors of the economy, in particular the oil industry. 12 Iranian production fell from 6 million barrels per day in September 1978 to 400,000 barrels per day in January 1979. 13 Saudi Arabia initially increased production to compensate for the Iranian supply shortage, but later placed a ceiling on its production. These series of events led to escalating oil prices and a great deal of uncertainty concerning the world oil market. Adelman, Morris Albert. The Genie Out of the Bottle: World Oil Since 1970.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, c1995. 350 p. LC Call Number: HD9560 .A28 1995 LC Catalog Record: 95008271 Adelman chronicles the oil-producing companies' monopoly on oil trade and prices since 1970, showing how OPEC nations at first overestimated their power, then held a lower price level. He introduces the basics of oil economics, explains why nearly all OPEC nations are still in debt, and debunks myths surrounding the supply and production of oil. Annotation by Book News, Inc. Bamberg, James H. British Petroleum and Global Oil, 1950-1975: The Challenge of Nationalism. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 637 p. LC Call Number: HD9571.9.B73 B36 2000 LC Catalog Record: 99051453 Table of Contents This work covers the history of one of the world's biggest oil businesses between 1950 and 1975.

Assessing BP's comparative performance, the book focuses on how BP responded politically, economically and culturally to the rise of new competitors. Synopsis by Books In Print. Black, Brian. Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, c2000. 235 p. LC Call Number: TN872.P4 B56 2000 LC Catalog Record: 99042473 Book Review (H-Net) The author offers a geographical and social history of a region that was not only the site of America's first oil boom but was also the world's largest oil producer between 1859 and 1873. Against the background of the growing demand for petroleum throughout and immediately following the Civil War, Black describes Oil Creek Valley's descent into environmental hell. Known as "Petrolia," the region charged the popular imagination with its nearly overnight transition from agriculture to industry. Synopsis by Books In Print. Economides, Michael J. The Color of Oil: The History, the Money, and the Politics of the World's Biggest Business. Katy, TX: Round Oak Pub. Co., c2000.

203 p. LC Call Number: HD9560.5 .E24 2000 LC Catalog Record: 99080030 This book describes the oil industry in a unique and introspective way, from the wildcatters of the 1930's to the corporate giants of today. The "primary colors" or input factors in oil production are money, technology, and people. Annotation by The Society of Petroleum Engineers. Ferrier, R.W. The History of the British Petroleum Company. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 2 volumes. LC Call Number: HD9571.9.B73 F47 1982 LC Catalog Record: 81018019 Table of Contents The first volume of this comprehensive history of British Petroleum covers the history of the Company from its origin up to 1975.

Volume 1, covering the years 1901-32, deals with the earlier years of the D'Arcy Concession from its granting in 1901 by the Shah of Persia to the discovery of oil in 1908, the formation of the Company in 1909 and its formative years. The second volume of BP's history aims to be an honest and comprehensive examination of the company in the period 1928-1954. Research in the book is based on unrestricted access to papers and personnel at BP, as well as numerous other sources. Synopsis by Books In Print. Grace, John D. Russian Oil Supply: Performance and Prospects. Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Oxford University Press, 2005. 288 p. LC Call Number: HD9575.R82 G68 2005 LC Catalog Record: 2005296716 Publisher-supplied Biographical Information This book traces the development of the Russian oil industry from its inception in the 1870's through the present. Annotation by Books In Print. Hendrix, Paul.

Sir Henri Deterding and Royal Dutch-Shell: Changing Control of World Oil, 1900-1940. Bristol: Bristol Academic, 2002. 275 p. LC Call Number: Not available LC Catalog Record: Not available Publisher Link: [Select Publications] The author provides the first full account in English of the controversial oil magnate Sir Henri Deterding, the founder and chief architect of Royal Dutch-Shell, and the history of the powerful oil company. This book builds on his earlier work in Dutch, Henri Deterding. De Koninklijke, de Shell en de Rothschilds (1996). Description by Publisher. Linde, Coby Van Der. Dynamic International Oil Markets: Oil Market Development and Structure, 1860-1990. Dordrecht, Netherlands; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, c1991. 224 p. LC Call Number: HD9560.5 .L565 1991 LC Catalog Record: 91035263 An analysis of long-term international oil market developments and provides insight into the fundamental organization of the oil industry.

The study looks at the oil industry's basic market structure, historical market developments, international market developments, the role of OPEC, the major oil companies, and the industry's market process and structure. Parra, Francisco. Oil Politics: A Modern History of Petroleum. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 364 p. LC Call Number: HD9560.6. P37 LC Catalog Record: 2004271160 Table of Contents Discusses the triangular relationship between the major players in the oil industry, host governments, and home-country governments that are at the heart of policies and politics in the international petroleum industry Sampson, Anthony. The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped. New York: Bantam Books, c1991. 414 p. LC Call Number: HD9560.5 .S24 1991 LC Catalog Record: 91159189 Table of Contents and Selected Text (Biofuel Library) Sampson discusses the beginning of the world's most critical industry and how the industry came to be dominated by the seven giant oil companies.

Tarbell, Ida M. and Chalmers, David Mark. The History of the Standard Oil Company. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003. 227 p. LC Call Number: HD9569.S8 T37 2003 LC Catalog Record: 2002034979 Publisher Description This reprint of the briefer version of a book that was originally serialized by McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1904, recounts the history of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, the first major industrial monopoly in the US. The story, which became a model for investigative journalists, explores corporate abuses perpetrated by the company. This is an unabridged re-publication of the Harper Torchbook edition originally published by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, New York, 1966. Annotation by Book News, Inc. Toal, Brian A. "The oil & gas game," Oil & Gas Investor. Jan 2001. Volume 21, Issue 1; page, 76. LC Call Number: HD9561 .O49 (vol. 21, iss.

1) LC Catalog Record: 82643824 Full text also available online in the subscription database ABI-Inform (ProQuest). (Available to onsite patrons only.) Shows highlights — and lowlights — of each year, from 1981 to 2001. Yergin, Daniel. The prize : the Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York : Simon & Schuster, c1991. 871 p. LC Call Number: HD9560.6 .Y47 1990 LC Catalog Record: 90047575 Daniel Yergin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for this history of international oil between 1850 and 1990. Part 1 (1850-1914) documents the origins of the oil industry around the world. Part 2 (1914-1940) covers the struggle of the early giants through the First World War, the automotive revolution, and the Great Depression.

Part 3 relates the story of oil in World War II, while Part 4 describes the increasingly complex interrelationships between oil, international politics, and economics during the post-war period. Finally, Part 5 discusses the battle for world mastery of the oil industry in the face of the numerous shocks and massive adjustments that have characterized its modern devlopment. The American Oil & Gas Historical Society's web site provides a number of useful and interesting resources. The site includes access to related news and industry historical newsletters available in full-text PDF format, links to publications, as well as interesting articles and photographs. Extreme Oil: The History. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). This web page, based on the PBS series "Extreme Oil," takes a comprehensive look at the oil industry. The web site presents an interactive timeline with information, text and photos covering demographic, historic and scientific aspects of oil production. Each section includes important facts along with other useful interactive links. Oil History. The Paleontological Research Institution. Provides an historical overview of the oil industry in the U.S. The web page focuses on three historically important oil production sites: Titusville, Pennsylvania; Spindletop, Texas; and Signal Hill, California.

The History of the Oil Industry - Chronology of Oil Events. San Joaquin Geological Society. The web page presents a chronology of important oil events dating from 347 B.C. to present-day oil production, and provides both a timeline of oil usage and significant oil industry dates, as well as historical summaries. Petroleum History Institute. Library of Congress Catalog Searches Additional works on the history of the oil and gas industries in the Library of Congress may be identified by searching the Online Catalog under appropriate Library of Congress subject headings. Choose the topics you wish to search from the following list of Library of Congress subject headings to link directly to the Catalog and automatically execute a search for the subject selected. Please be aware that during periods of heavy use you may encounter delays in accessing the catalog. Please see the individual sections of this guide for catalog searches relating to those topics. For assistance in locating the many other subject headings which relate to this subject, please consult a reference librarian . Advanced Search Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

—Jimmy Carter, state of the union address, Jan. 23, 1980 Middle Eastern oil has enchanted global powers and global capital since the early twentieth century. Its allure has been particularly powerful for the United States. The American romance began in earnest in the 1930s, when geologists working for Standard Oil of California discovered commercial quantities of oil on the eastern shores of Saudi Arabia. In the years that followed, enchantment turned into obsession. Shortly after World War II it became clear that oil was more than merely a coveted industrial commodity. The most visible and celebrated event in that history occurred when Franklin D. Roosevelt hosted ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Ibn Saud, the founding monarch of Saudi Arabia, aboard the USSQuincy on Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake in February 1945. The meeting permanently linked Middle Eastern oil with American national security. It also helped forge one of the twentieth century’s most important strategic relationships, in which the Saudis would supply cheap oil to global markets in exchange for American protection. A bargain was made. And so too was a future tinderbox.

1 Over the course of the twentieth century, preserving the security not just of Saudi Arabia but of the entire Persian Gulf region and the flow of Middle Eastern oil were among the United States’ chief political-economic concerns. 2 The pursuit of American power in the Gulf has been fraught with peril and has proved costly in terms of both blood and treasure. Oil has flowed, although not without difficulty. Since the late 1970s the Gulf has been rocked by revolution and almost permanent war. Security, if measured by the absence of conflict, has been elusive, and safeguarding the Persian Gulf and the region’s oil producers has meant increasingly more direct and dearer forms of U.S. intervention. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the American military occupation there represented only the latest stage of American militarism in the Middle East. While more considerable in scale, duration, and devastation than previous military misadventures in the region, the Iraq War was the outgrowth of several decades of strategic thinking and policy making about oil.

It is true, of course, that terrorism and especially the attacks of September 11, 2001, helped accelerate the drive to war in 2003, but to focus too much on 9/11 is to overlook and discount the ways that oil and oil producers have long been militarized, the role oil has played in regional confrontation for almost four decades, and the connections between the most recent confrontation with Iraq and those of the past. 3 Oil and war have become increasingly interconnected in the Middle East. Indeed, that relationship has become a seemingly permanent one. This outcome was not inevitable; the United States has not only been mired in the middle, but its approach to oil has also abetted the outcome. It is also important to understand the U.S. emphasis on security, and the contradictions of its approach to it, in a broader regional context. While this essay does not dwell on the U.S.-Israeli relationship, U.S. Persian Gulf policy and America’s relationship with the region’s oil producers were often at odds with the alliance between the United States and Israel. The tensions created by American policies in the Gulf have undermined U.S. claims about pursuing regional security more generally.

This contradiction played out most spectacularly during the 1973 oil crisis. 4 The Strategic Logic of Militarism The United States is not the only Western power with a history of war in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. In a rush to secure and expand their own supplies in the region, the British landed an expeditionary force near Basra in what is now Iraq in 1914. By 1918 the British captured Baghdad and ensconced themselves and their allies there, a perch from which they projected power for several decades. 5 American ascendance in the Persian Gulf later in the century created a new pattern of militarism and war. Unlike its predecessors, the United States did not wage war out of old-fashioned imperial calculation or ambition. American oil wars have not been about establishing direct control over oil fields nor about liberation or freedom, at least not political freedom for the peoples of the region. Instead, they have primarily been about protecting friendly oil producers. The objective has not necessarily been to guarantee that Middle Eastern oil made its way to the United States, although meeting basic domestic energy needs remained a vital part of the broader calculation. Keeping prices stable (not low) and keeping pro-American regimes in power were central to U.S.

strategic policy. The pattern of militarism that began in the Persian Gulf in the 1970s has partly been the product of American support for and deliberate militarization of brutal and vulnerable authoritarian regimes. Massive weapons sales to oil autocrats and the decision to build a geopolitical military order in the Gulf that depended on and empowered those rulers resulted in a highly militarized and fragile balance of power. And from the 1970s on, oil-producing states have faced repeated internal and external threats, including domestic unrest, invasion, and regional or civil war, or at least the imminent prospect of turmoil. Such instability and conflict has had much to do, of course, with internal political problems, only some of which were the result of outside intervention. But the militarization that began in earnest under the United States’ watch exacerbated and accelerated those uncertainties and helped further destabilize oil-producing states and the region. The approach of the United States to oil and the Persian Gulf in the late twentieth century was both a sign of its superpower status and a demonstration of its limits.

What began as an effort to build up and empower surrogates, client states in the Gulf that would do the bidding of the United States, proved instead to be the gateway for more direct projections of American military power. Jimmy Carter’s warning during his 1980 state of the union address that the United States would use “any means necessary, including military force” to safeguard its “vital interests” in the Gulf has clearly come to pass. 6 The late 1960s and early 1970s marked the transformative period in the United States’ approach to security and militarism in the Persian Gulf. In January 1968 the British government announced that it would end its longtime imperial presence in the region and withdraw its political and military resources. The move unsettled American policy makers anxious about a potential power vacuum. Other pressures also began to mount. In the decade leading up to the British announcement, governments of oil-producing countries had already begun to bristle against the dominating and unfair practices of the major oil companies, which had exercised monopolistic control over the means of production and pricing for much of the twentieth century.

In 1960 several major oil producers established the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in a gambit to drive prices higher. OPEC achieved little in its early years. The assertiveness of the oil producers would grow by the 1970s, however, as major producers began to nationalize the operations of the oil companies. 7 More importantly, contradictions in America’s Middle East security strategy would challenge the nation’s efforts to maintain friendly relations with the region’s oil producers. Historically, the United States struggled to balance its support for Israel with its support for the region’s oil producers, who had long considered the Israel-friendly foreign policy of the United States as an irritant. In 1973 this irritation transformed into outrage during the October War, when Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israeli forces to recapture territory in the Sinai Peninsula. Gulf oil producers were infuriated when the United States helped re-equip the beleaguered Israeli military in the course of battle. Led by Saudi Arabia, Arab oil producers and oil companies orchestrated an embargo of the United States, thereby drying up supply and driving up prices.

As a result of the 1973 crisis, the oil-producing countries finally seized direct control over production and pricing mechanisms from the giant Western oil conglomerates, leading to a massive increase in oil revenues for those nations. The embargo and its impact on domestic politics troubled American officials, who struggled to rebuild relations with oil-producing allies. But the anxieties generated by the contradictions of U.S. policies on Israel and oil did not lead to a reconsideration of U.S. regional security policy. Rather, the United States deepened its commitment to the regional order. 8 In fact, after the initial shock of the embargo, the rapid spike in prices did not overly trouble American policy makers, who worked to convince leaders in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and elsewhere in the Gulf to reinvest the revenues they were generating from the skyrocketing price of oil in the West by spending some of their newfound wealth on Western products and, most importantly, American weapons. The creation of a weapons pipeline deepened the ties between the United States and Gulf oil producers, but the waves of nationalization did help dismantle a geopolitical framework that had served American oil interests in the past.

In that system Western oil companies, in cooperation with their home governments, exercised direct control over Middle Eastern oil. The relationships between these companies and the oil-producer governments were periodically tempestuous, but they were mostly cooperative. Governments of the region fought to achieve a modicum of equity in profit sharing from the sale of oil, but they remained almost entirely beholden to the companies for the extraction, refining, distribution, and sale of petroleum. It was an arrangement that enjoyed the full support of the U.S. government. Companies such as Aramco that operated in Saudi Arabia not only cooperated closely with the U.S. government, but they also often had members of the American political and intelligence communities on their payrolls. 9 The convergence of corporate and political interests around oil had profound consequences on the character of political authority in and around the region. The companies helped forge and defend a set of relationships with Arab autocrats that American leaders since Roosevelt have considered vital to the stability of the region. The United States demonstrated its preference for autocrats in 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a coup to overthrow Mohammed Mossadeq, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, and bring back Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi as ruler.

The oil companies did their part to strengthen authoritarians elsewhere in the region. During the 1950s and 1960s U.S. government officials and oil-company executives feared the potential power of Arab nationalists and the possibility that they might nationalize Arab oil and refuse to supplicate to American and Western interests. The companies and the U.S. government considered the possibility of such a scenario a threat to U.S. Cold War and material interests in the Persian Gulf. 10 Although direct corporate and U.S. political control over Persian Gulf oil ended in the 1970s, the authoritarian regimes remained. The U.S. government sought to do new kinds of business with them, by arming them and positioning them as surrogates for American interests and power. Richard M. Nixon provided the impetus for the new militarization strategy in 1969 when he articulated a new strategic doctrine. Under pressure to guide the United States out of the quagmire in Vietnam, the Nixon Doctrine called on American allies to bear a greater burden in providing for their own defense. U.S.

policy makers observed the doctrine in the Gulf by keeping American military forces “over the horizon.” Without the British present to preserve the Gulf’s balance of power, the United States moved to build up local militaries to maintain regional order. The American government focused primarily on strengthening Iran and Saudi Arabia, propping them up as the twin pillars of the United States’ new regional geopolitical strategy. Between 1970 and 1979 the United States committed to over $22 billion in arms sales to Iran, accounting for roughly three-quarters of all of Iran’s weapons purchases during the decade. Sales commitments to Saudi Arabia were more modest, at just under $3.5 billion for the decade, still a significant amount considering that the United States only started selling weapons to the kingdom in 1972. 11 The Perils of Militarization The consequences of the new militarization policy were considerable. Although the policies were not immediately destabilizing, they did help lay the foundation for the era of violence and insecurity that followed. As militarization became a regional phenomenon, it also emboldened Gulf dictators, who became increasingly assertive and threatening to one another.

Rising tensions in the Gulf, most notably between Iran and Iraq, were the result of complicated domestic and regional politics. However, embattled Gulf state leaders sought security through the purchase of billions of dollars worth of weapons, which the American government and the American weapons industry were happy to provide. The result was further massive militarization of the region and a boon for the military-industrial complex. By the end of the decade the largest oil producers in the Gulf were in a full-blown arms race. The Soviet Union pitched in by committing to sell over $10 billion in weapons to Iraq, its main client in the region and the principal rival to Iran. But it was the United States that did the most to facilitate the militarization of the region. Between 1975 and 1979 Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia purchased 56 percent of all the weapons sold in the Middle East and made almost one-quarter of all global arms purchases. Lee Hamilton, a leading Democratic congressman, warned in a 1973 statement on the floor of Congress about the potentially excessive nature of arms sales to the region.

He remarked that “the net impression left … is that we are willing to sell just about everything these Persian Gulf states want and will buy.” And buy they did. Iran proved particularly keen to acquire as much high-tech military weaponry as possible. The shah purchased the newest weapons systems available from American manufacturers, including seventy-nine F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, the U.S. Navy’s premier fighter, in 1974. 12 By the middle of the 1970s, the American notion of security in the Persian Gulf was based almost entirely on the ability of oil producers to purchase the machines of war. The militarization of the Persian Gulf exacerbated existing instabilities and hastened an era of regional conflict. During the heyday of arms sales, some U.S. officials and elected representatives grew alarmed. Throughout the 1970s and into the following decade, members of Congress convened regular meetings to flesh out the potential harm of massive militarization in the Gulf. Much of the concern centered on the potential threat that newly armed Arab oil producers posed to Israel.

Hamilton cautioned that “the appropriate area for justifiable concerns is in the general policy of pouring lots of sophisticated arms in an extremely volatile portion of the Middle East, known not for exemplary regional cooperation, but instead for a plethora of territorial, ethnic, familial and political disputes over the last several hundred years.” 13 Although others shared Hamilton’s anxieties, those responsible for overseeing U.S. policy in the Gulf dismissed those concerns. The warnings expressed by Hamilton and others should have prompted caution, but few policy makers or arms manufacturers were inclined to question the stability of authoritarian regimes that had been longtime allies. Especially after the first oil boom, Gulf oil states seemed even more in command than before. Flush with billions of dollars in new oil revenues by the mid-1970s, the Gulf oil producers went on a decade-long domestic spending spree, throwing money at a range of social, economic, and potential political problems. Regimes in the region committed billions of dollars to modernization and development programs and to the expansion of cradle-to-grave social services. 14 The intent of that spending was to redistribute oil wealth as a means to stave off potential restiveness. And the potential for unrest was considerable.

Most of the Gulf’s autocrats came to power through conquest, alliances with imperial powers, or both. The preferred clients of the United States, the rulers of Iran and Saudi Arabia, used a combination of coercion and co-option to establish and then maintain their power. But even after decades of rule, neither regime possessed much credibility or legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens. Significant domestic political fault lines were evident in each country. Although most Saudi Arabians and Iranians embraced the new wealth and the services it provided, many continued to bristle against the practices of their rulers. Both regimes assumed that the widespread redistribution of wealth would placate whatever simmering hostilities lurked beneath the surface of Saudi Arabian and Iranian society. Neither engaged in any significant reform or allowed for a greater role for their citizens in government. Saudi Arabia, with a smaller population, became less coercive, although the threat of regime violence was omnipresent. In contrast, the shah in Iran remained a brutal and cruel tyrant. Martin Ennals, the secretary general of Amnesty International, remarked in 1977 that Iran has the “highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.

No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.” 15 Leaders in both countries proceeded as though the spike in oil revenues and their new spending power had allowed them to renew autocracy at home. Their social programs were meant to establish a new deal with the governed, one in which the state redistributed wealth in exchange for complete political quiescence. Many inside and outside Iran and Saudi Arabia assumed that the new social contract and the influx of oil revenues had strengthened the regimes. In neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran did the bargain hold up. Rather than emerge from the oil boom stronger, both regimes proved vulnerable to significant domestic pressures by the end of the 1970s. Saudi Arabia faced two episodes of unrest in November 1979. In the kingdom’s Eastern Province, tens of thousands of Shi ites rebelled against Saudi rule and especially against their status as second-class citizens. Simultaneously, but in an unrelated event, hundreds of rebels seized and occupied the Mecca Grand Mosque. The rebels, who denounced the Al Saud ruling family as illegitimate rulers, held the mosque for two weeks before being rooted out by a combination of Saudi and French special forces.

16 It was the oil-fueled authoritarianism in Iran, however, that proved most vulnerable. Iranian revolutionaries tossed the shah from power in 1979. 17 The fall of the shah, considered unthinkable by American officials just a few years before, demolished the twin-pillar policy. From the perspective of American policy makers, the revolution radically transformed the balance of power in the region, turning Iran from America’s strategic ally to a menacing rival. Whatever the reality of Iran’s new position in the region, the revolution brought to a dramatic conclusion U.S. reliance on highly militarized local powers as defenders of the Gulf’s regional order. While they would continue to encourage and oversee the militarization of Saudi Arabia and other Arab oil producers in the 1980s and beyond, American leaders lost faith in the idea that local surrogates possessed the political capacity to safeguard U.S. interests. Anxieties that Middle Eastern oil was vulnerable to new Cold War developments also deepened shortly after the fall of the shah, which accelerated the transformation of how the United States would project its power in the region.

In December 1979 the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted Carter to make clear America’s deep attachment to the Persian Gulf and U.S. willingness to use militarily force to protect the flow of oil. Even after Carter mapped out a new strategic/military vision for the region, it would not be fully realized for a few years. Nevertheless, it was here that the era of direct American intervention in the Persian Gulf began. The Long War The Iranian Revolution not only helped transform the regional order and reshape American policy but it also helped unleash many of the destructive forces that have plagued the Persian Gulf ever since. In September 1980, sensing weakness in Iran and concerned about potential domestic challenges to his power, Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi army to launch an invasion of Iranian oil facilities. Fighting between Iran and Iraq persisted until 1988, with hundreds of thousands killed and wounded. The Persian Gulf has been virtually engulfed in war ever since. Of course, American oil policy was not directly responsible for Hussein’s decision to invade Iran. Hussein perceived himself to be beset by a number of domestic and regional challenges that he believed war would resolve.

18 The considerations that led him down this path were partly pathological, but they were also shaped by the militarization of oil and the region in the previous decade. This intense militarization, the politics of the region’s arms race, and the combination of the increasing boldness of regional powers and their growing paranoia about one another were central to Hussein’s calculus for war. While the United States claimed to have been caught off guard by Iraq’s invasion of Iran, many U.S. policy makers came to see a continuation of the war as a useful way to bog down two of the region’s most highly militarized regimes and to stave off short-term threats to the regional order and the political economy of oil. To this end, the United States supplied weapons, funding, and intelligence to both sides in the conflict, and acknowledged and condoned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons on the battlefield and against its own citizens. 19 The decision to view the Iran-Iraq War as a useful conflict, one worth abetting as a means to contain the belligerents and therefore ensure security elsewhere in the Gulf, proved to be a dangerous gambit. Ultimately, that decision would result in the realization of the Carter Doctrine and the direct intervention of the United States in Persian Gulf conflict.

And it was the threat to oil shipping that finally brought the American military in to stay. In 1986 Kuwait requested protection from both the United States and the Soviet Union from Iranian attacks on its oil tankers. The following March the United States obliged by allowing Kuwaiti tankers to fly the U.S. flag, thereby rendering attacks on tankers as attacks on American interests, and by dispatching a large naval fleet to provide direct protection. American and Iranian military forces exchanged fire on several occasions in 1987. Hostilities escalated in 1988, with the United States sinking several Iranian warships and damaging oil platforms. That summer the USSVincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing all 290 civilians on board. The incident was a stunning blow to Iran, and one that effectively sapped its will to fight further. 20 That the United States became an active participant in the Iran-Iraq War, taking and causing casualties, is hardly a secret. Yet it has not been featured in considerations of the patterns of American engagement in the region or in its history of militarism in the Gulf. It should be.

The war intensified American and Arab anxieties about Iranian power and ambition, worries that began with the 1979 revolution. Iran’s status as one of the region’s principal bogeymen and “rogue” states has endured and continues today to be one of the primary and repeated justifications for a continued American military presence in the region. American involvement in and efforts to protract the Iran-Iraq War also shaped future conflict with Iraq. Although Iraq received substantial military, technical, and financial assistance from the United States and its Arab neighbors during the war, it emerged from the conflict mired in debt and deeply shaken. Although encouraged by its allies and its patrons to drag out the war, Iraq could not afford it. Hussein borrowed heavily from neighboring oil states to fund his war machine. Unable to pay its debts or to stimulate its economy after the war, Iraq faced domestic disaster. Saddam Hussein urgently sought a remedy, knowing that his power would be imperiled if he proved unable to steward Iraq back to the path of reasonable prosperity. Reestablishing its oil industry and resecuring a share of the global oil market might have provided Iraq a way out of indebtedness, but Iraq’s oil-producing neighbors were not sympathetic.

Arab lenders demanded that Iraq repay its war debts. Meanwhile, several of Iraq’s neighbors, including Kuwait, were dumping excess oil onto the market, which had the effect of driving prices down, limiting Iraqi revenues, and constraining its potential recovery. 21 The anxieties, traumas, and hypermilitarism that precipitated Iran’s revolution, Iraq’s invasion, and the escalation of regional insecurity in the 1980s persisted. After two years of pleading and saber rattling, Saddam Hussein once again pursued a military solution, invading Kuwait in August 1990 and precipitating an even more dramatic escalation of American military intervention in the Gulf. Much of the history of Operation Desert Storm and the 1990s sanctions regime are well known. Alarmed by the potential fallout of Iraq possessing not only Kuwaiti oil but also Saudi Arabian oil led the United States to mobilize more than five hundred thousand troops in its largest war effort since the Vietnam War. In just a few days the U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. In the decade that followed the United States oversaw a devastating sanctions regime that eviscerated Iraq’s society and economy.

The official American policy immediately after the war was one of containing both Iraq and Iran—keeping the region’s “rogue” states from threatening the other oil producers. By the end of the 1990s, however, containment had given way to a policy of regime change, the high-water mark of direct American militarism in the region, in which the U.S. government began actively to pursue the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Even the sanctions regime, which was officially rationalized as a system designed to ensure that Iraq abandon its weapons of mass destruction program, functioned instead as an extension of the policy of regime change, which was realized with the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. 22 Capturing oil and oil fields and establishing direct or imperial control over oil has not been part of the United States’ strategic logic for war. But protecting oil, oil producers, and the flow of oil has been. This is a critical distinction. The period between 1990 and the end of the long war in Iraq marks only the latest stage of American militarism in the Gulf.

If oil and American oil policy—rather than the behavior of Saddam Hussein, the politics of the war on terrorism, or a handful of other political factors—are kept in focus, then one can argue that this period constitutes not a series of wars, but a single long war, one in which pursuing regional security and protecting oil and American-friendly oil producers has been the principal strategic rationale. That the permanent shadow of war has settled over the Persian Gulf in the last three decades is largely the direct outcome of the ways that oil has been tied to American national security and the ways that American policy makers linked security to militarization. An Elusive Security It might be tempting to argue that the escalating involvement of the United States and its history of militarism and military engagement in the Gulf region have provided a kind of security for the region. After all, oil has continued to flow, the network of oil producers has remained the same, and thus the primary interests of the United States in the region have been served. But three decades of war belie this argument. War is not tantamount to security, stability, or peace. Even in the periods between wars in the region the violence carried out by regimes against their own subjects makes clear that peace is not always peaceful.

The cost has been high for the United States and especially for people who live in the Middle East. In thirty years of war, hundreds of thousands have died excruciating and violent deaths. Poverty, environmental disaster, torture, and wretched living conditions haunt the lives of many in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. Of course, the burden of death and destruction does not fall entirely on the United States and its policy of militarization. The politics of war have primarily served the interests of regional leaders who have, often from a position of weakness, exported violence to deflect internal challenges to their authority. And international political rivalry, particularly during the Cold War, drew in the other global powers, most notably the Soviet Union, which also helped facilitate insecurity and disorder in the Middle East. The region’s autocrats have also remained in power. As citizens began to challenge ruling regimes in early 2011 in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Oman—three of the closest allies of the United States in the region—it became clear that those governments are all too willing to turn the weapons of war, purchased mostly from the United States, on their subjects.

It is also clear that those regimes are hardly stable and that they are and will remain perennially vulnerable to domestic and regional shocks, which poses a real dilemma for U.S. policy. In addition to factoring in the human toll of wars and the moral dilemmas they raise, Americans trying to determine the true price of oil in the United States must take into account the financial cost of maintaining a massive military presence in the Gulf region. Roger Stern estimates that between 1976 and 2007 the total cost of maintaining the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf was about $7 trillion, and that figure does not include the costs of the 2003 Iraq War. 23 The increasing willingness of the United States to use force and violence to shore up the flow of oil to global markets has not been a sign of American strength but rather of its limits. Popular political discourse in the United States often posits Americans and their government as unwitting victims of an unhealthy and unsustainable addiction or as dupes of duplicitous oil producers. It would certainly be wise to break this addiction to oil, but to do so requires coming to terms with the history of that addiction and the multiple costs it entails.

But it is hardly clear that any such reconsideration is happening. Instead, the United States appears set to continue along a familiar path. Having crafted a set of relationships with oil and unstable oil producers and having linked the fate of those relationships to American national security virtually ensures that while the United States is wrapping up the most recent oil war, its military and political strategists are already preparing for the next one. He is grateful to Vishal Kamath, Matthew Oliveri, Courtney Shaw, Justin Stearns, Chris Toensing, Robert Vitalis, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicut, and the JAH referees for their criticisms and suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay 1 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York, 2008), 385–86; Lloyd C. Gardner, Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East after World War II (New York, 2009), 19–25. 2 For an alternative take on the political economy of oil and the need to protect supply, see Timothy Mitchell, “McJihad: Islam in the U.S.

Global Order,” Social Text, 20 (Winter 2002), 5. Timothy Mitchell notes that “contrary to popular belief, there is too much [oil]. Oil is the world’s second most abundant fluid, so any producer is always at risk of being undercut by another. If all one wanted was a market in oil to supply those who need it, this would pose no problem. But the oil industry is about profits, not markets, and large profits are impossible to sustain under such competitive conditions. The potential rents—or ‘premiums on scarcity,’ as they are called—could be realized only if mechanisms were put in place to create the scarcity.” See ibid. 3 Sheila Carapico and Chris Toensing wrote in 2006 that “to hear American politicians and the commercial news media tell it, the greatest military power in world history hastily launched an ill-conceived invasion because of intelligence failures and wishful fantasies of sweets and flowers. It is as if, to paraphrase a sentiment heard in White House hallways on September 11, 2001, history really did start on that day, and nothing that happened beforehand mattered.

It is as if the United States had never articulated a global vision of ‘full-spectrum dominance,’ acted upon hegemonic ambitions in the Persian Gulf or planned for forcible ‘regime change’ in Iraq.” See Sheila Carapico and Chris Toensing, “The Strategic Logic of the Iraq Blunder,” Middle East Report (no. 239, Summer 2006), 6–11, esp. 6. For the best account emphasizing the role of 9/11 in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, see F. Gregory Gause III, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (New York, 2010), 184–97. 4 On the tensions between U.S. policies regarding Israel and oil, see Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicut, “The End of the Concessionary Regime: Oil and American Power in Iraq, 1958–1972” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2011).

5 On Iraq and the British role there see Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (New York, 2000), 30–147; Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Bathists, and Free Officers (Princeton, 1978); Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley, 2005); Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: A History of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York, 2003); and Priya Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East (New York, 2008). 6 On the Carter Doctrine, see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York, 1983).

7 Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Ithaca, 1988), 134. On the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), see Yergin, Prize; and Leonardo Magueri, The Age of Oil: What They Don’t Want You to Know about the World’s Most Controversial Resource (Westport, 2006), 93–102. 8 Joe Stork, Middle East Oil and the Energy Crisis (New York, 1975). See also James Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History (New York, 2011). Andrew Scott Cooper, The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East (New York, 2011). 9 On the efforts of American policy makers to convince leaders to reinvest revenues from oil sales to the West, see Cooper, Oil Kings. Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Palo Alto, 2007).

Aramco was the name for the Arabian American Oil Company, a consortium established by the U.S.-based oil giants Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil. Aramco operated under their ownership until 1980, when it was fully nationalized by Saudi Arabia. 10 On the role of U.S. experts in strengthening the grip of the Saudi royal family over its territory and resources in the twentieth century, see Toby Craig Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, Mass., 2010). Mark J. Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup d’Etat in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19 (Aug. 1987), 261–86. Nathan J. Citino, From Arab Nationalism to OPEC: Eisenhower, King Saūd, and the Making of U.S.-Saudi Relations (Bloomington, 2002). 11 Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill, 2002).

On the United States and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, see Safran, Saudi Arabia, 180–214. The dollar figures are drawn from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Arms Transfer Database at and are presented using SIPRI’s online trend indicator values (TIVs) expressed in U.S. dollar amounts at constant 1990 prices. For an explanation of SIPRI’s arms transfer tables, see “Explanation of the TIV Tables,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, . 12 SIPRI Trend Indicator Values Database, . Gause, International Relations of the Persian Gulf, 33. Statement by Lee Hamilton on “Arms Policy in Persian Gulf Area,” May 31, 1973, in New Perspectives on the Persian Gulf, Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Third Congress, 1973 (Washington, 1973), 191. SIPRI Arms Transfer Database and SIPRI Trade Register Database, . The original sale of the F-14 Tomcats was for eighty planes.

Seventy-nine were delivered between 1976 and 1978, with the United States quarantining one after the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution. 13

Question: In which decade were the first oil fields discovered in Saudi Arabia?
Answer: 1930's