Notes on a chapter from: Arabs, Oil and History

These are some notes I took on a chapter from a book I recently got from the library called Arabs, Oil and History, The Story of the Middle East, by Kermit Roosevelt. The notes are taken directly from chapter four which is entitled: Buried Treasure (pgs 25-33)

**A quick note: this book was published in 1949 so the information should be read with consideration of the era in which it was written, I tried to only include general history info but there's some that talks about "today," which of course, is referring to 1949.

• Middle East oil fields to supply 80% of oil needs of Marshall Plan countries between 1948-1951
• "any serious stoppage in the flow of ME oil has immediate repercussions upon the political as well as economic balance of the world" (pg. 25)
• "If only Allah had not seen fit to drench our lands in oil, maybe the British, the Russians, the French and even the Zionists would leave us alone and let us live in peace and freedom!" (pg26) - said by a young Iraqi
• oil exploration began in Southwest Iran where oil was discovered in 1908
• by 1913 Britain had aqcuired a controlling interest in the Anglo-Iranian oil company
• biggest producing field in Iraq was discovered in 1927 (Kirkuk field)
• production of oil in Bahrain began in 1932 - oil was not discovered in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia until 1938
• 1936 total ME oil production = 265,000 barrels/day
• that total was exceeded by S.Arabia alone in 1949 and it hadn't even been producing in '36 (pg. 28)
• By  the middle of 1948, Saudi Arabia was producing 410,000 barrels/day and ME as a whole was producing 1,057,000 barrels/day
• actual production (1949) is in hands of foreign companies owned chiefly by the British, Americans, French and Dutch
• "ME countries have neither the knowledge nor technical experience nor the capital necessary to exploit their own god fortune" (pg. 28).
• American companies in the area: Socony Vacuum, Standard of NJ, Texas Company, Standard of CA, Gulf Exploration Co., and American Independent Oil Co.
• Challenges to the production of oil = transportation (pipelines) & refining (pg. 30) - remember this is 1949 context
• first ME-Mediterranean pipeline, from Kirkuk to sea was completed in 1934 (pg 30)
• In 1938 oil was moving from West to East at a rate of about 700,000 barrels/day
• US was importing 170,000 barrels/day while exporting 447,000 barrels/day
• at that time the ME was exporting 237,000 barrels/day
• by 1949, world consumption had increased by half of what it was in 1938 and consumption in the US was up +75% (pg. 31).
• Direct payment to governments inthe form of royalties for oil produced in 1948 (pg. 32)=
• Iran: 33 million dollars
• Iraq: 7.25 million $
• S. Arabia: 28 million $
• Bahrain: 1.5 million $
• Kuwait: 4.75 million $
• Most ME oil comes from thick formations of porous limestone