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The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. The prevailing view is “the British came in and took our oil.” But everyone overlooks that

The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. The prevailing view is “the British came in and took our oil.” But everyone overlooks that the Arab countries had never developed the mechanical technology to really extract it except the portion that came near the surface.

Aspos 1y ago
One does not need to develop the tech to own the oil and monetize it. Those who developed the tech can be hired.
- rayiner 1y ago
  Your options are limited when you have none of the tech stack to find the oil, development fields, and extract the oil. Nor the capital to buy the equipment and do it all yourself. Theoretically, book authors could “hire” everyone needed to turn a popular book into a movie. But in practice they sell the rights to develop the property to a studio in return for a cut of the profits.
  - pazimzadeh 1y ago
    Finding the oil fields was often easy. The soil was oily to the touch. The Arabs were using the oil for lamps for a while (think Aladdin’s lamp).
    - AftHurrahWinch 1y ago
      Aladdin's lamp would have been an olive-oil lamp. Flammable vapor lamps are comparatively modern. Before the Renaissance, rock-oil/petroleum was used mostly for waterproofing as tar, with a few other medicinal and military uses.
      - pazimzadeh 1y ago
        Highly doubt it was olive oil. But naphta was used as wicks for lanterns and oil and natural gas were burned thousands of years ago. The real point is not what the oil was used for, but that the oil fields were not particularly hard to find. From Alexander the Great to Al Masudi, there are plenty of records of oil pools and puddles throughout Persia and Arabia https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199505/land.of.the.naphtha.fountain.htm https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199505/land.of.the.nap... https://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/islmoil1.html https://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/islmoil1.html
    - rayiner 1y ago
      The British company that first found oil in Iran nearly ran out of money before finding it. In the middle east some oil comes to the surface, and in fact the Muslim world invented distillation in the middle ages. But finding sources to support a commercial oil field is another matter.
  - Aspos 1y ago
    There is a difference in the way it went for Saudis and Iranians. Saudis, not having the tech, capital, knowledge at the time, still retained ownership. Iranians did not. Saudis had enough bargaining power (and balls), Iranian Shakh agreed to exploitative concessions. Those who had the tech, capital and expertise in the end just lined up in front of Saudis to be hired.
- kimixa 1y ago
  It also requires significant capital investment on top of whatever it takes to hire them. The equipment isn't cheap, and the entire stack of knowledge you need to hire in spiders out significantly, and with the lack of experience likely would take a long time to truly fill all the knowledge gaps. It may not be obvious what you're lacking until you start hitting walls. Bootstrapping via external investors experienced in the sector is way faster, but comes with costs, as shown in the deals here. But that's true in every market.
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  That's essentially what happened. Good luck negotiating when it is well known that if you don't get a deal, you'll get $0. Whereas those with oil expertise can easily go to other potentially productive oil fields.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Back then they wouldn't have had lateral drilling abilities. Otherwise, they'd just sit in their space taking your oil before you even knew you had oil
boringg 1y ago
They didn't have anything - not just the mechanical technology, the talent, the market, the capital, infrastructure or the use case.
hamonrye 1y ago
Crude oil was developed as therapy to treat arthiritic along the Caspian sea.
oa335 1y ago
> The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. Comment you replied to is talking about the history of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Iran is outside the Arab world.
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  It's difficult to come up with a comprehensive name that encompasses the oil-rich lands within eastern / middle-eastern / central Asia, north Africa, and south-eastern Europe. I'm strongly reminded of Peter Adamson's Google Lecture on philosophy in the Islamic World, which is almost entirely dedicated to the matter of why he calls it the Islamic World, rather than Arabic, Persian, Islam, or several other possible names. Ideas are maps, and here the map fits the terrain fairly poorly. Any term is going to have its inaccuracies, and will inflate or neglect one or more parties. Ultimately, though, that specific matter is of very limited interest or discussion potential.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    Resource cursed countries?
    - dredmorbius 1y ago
      That too, but there's the geographical continuity which spans continents (at least as we generally classify them), cultures, language, and religion. Resource curse isn't oil specific, and you might include some remote outliers into that group as well: Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria, for example, all oil producers, and numerous others throughout the world based on other natural resources, with Nauru being perhaps the most spectacular boom-bust case. The question of how / why / whether the US avoided the resource curse is another interesting one. I'd argue that it's similar to the case of the UK, in that 1) energy resources and industrialisation arose more-or-less simultaneously, 2) in a world with no industrial rivals and 3) with a fairly wide regional variance in both. In the case of the US, industry settled largely in the Great Lakes / North-East regions, whilst energy was focused in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. The latter three far more resemble resource-cursed countries in their economic, political, and socioeconomic profiles, though much of that is tied up in ... other historical baggage, to avoid taking this thread entirely off the rails ;-)
BeetleB 1y ago
> The prevailing view is “the British came in and took our oil.” No one thinks that in Saudi Arabia, because it is not remotely true.
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  No, in Saudia Arabia, it was the Americans. Editing/Updating to note: yes, the British were involved, somewhat, but for various reasons the UK had a far greater influence in Persia, and the US in Saudi Arabia, particularly following the Great Bitter Lake meeting between Kind Saud and FDR, very shortly before the latter's death, during WWII. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_oil_industry_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_oil_industry_in...> (Also covered in The Prize which is mentioned by myself and others elsewhere in this thread.)
dredmorbius 1y ago
For anyone interested in learning that history, I cannot recommend highly enough Daniel Yergin's book The Prize (1990), and its companion PBS series of the same title (1992). <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_Oil,_Money,_and_Power#Adaptations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_...> That recommendation comes despite the fact that Yergin is an unapologetic booster of the petroleum industry. The simple fact is that he's written an exquisitely researched and detailed history of oil in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the tremendous changes it produced. This includes ample coverage of oil development throughout the Middle-East and North Africa (and of course, elsewhere).
- rayiner 1y ago
  Thanks!

Aspos 1y ago

One does not need to develop the tech to own the oil and monetize it. Those who developed the tech can be hired.

rayiner 1y ago
Your options are limited when you have none of the tech stack to find the oil, development fields, and extract the oil. Nor the capital to buy the equipment and do it all yourself. Theoretically, book authors could “hire” everyone needed to turn a popular book into a movie. But in practice they sell the rights to develop the property to a studio in return for a cut of the profits.
- pazimzadeh 1y ago
  Finding the oil fields was often easy. The soil was oily to the touch. The Arabs were using the oil for lamps for a while (think Aladdin’s lamp).
  - AftHurrahWinch 1y ago
    Aladdin's lamp would have been an olive-oil lamp. Flammable vapor lamps are comparatively modern. Before the Renaissance, rock-oil/petroleum was used mostly for waterproofing as tar, with a few other medicinal and military uses.
    - pazimzadeh 1y ago
      Highly doubt it was olive oil. But naphta was used as wicks for lanterns and oil and natural gas were burned thousands of years ago. The real point is not what the oil was used for, but that the oil fields were not particularly hard to find. From Alexander the Great to Al Masudi, there are plenty of records of oil pools and puddles throughout Persia and Arabia https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199505/land.of.the.naphtha.fountain.htm https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199505/land.of.the.nap... https://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/islmoil1.html https://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/islmoil1.html
  - rayiner 1y ago
    The British company that first found oil in Iran nearly ran out of money before finding it. In the middle east some oil comes to the surface, and in fact the Muslim world invented distillation in the middle ages. But finding sources to support a commercial oil field is another matter.
- Aspos 1y ago
  There is a difference in the way it went for Saudis and Iranians. Saudis, not having the tech, capital, knowledge at the time, still retained ownership. Iranians did not. Saudis had enough bargaining power (and balls), Iranian Shakh agreed to exploitative concessions. Those who had the tech, capital and expertise in the end just lined up in front of Saudis to be hired.
kimixa 1y ago
It also requires significant capital investment on top of whatever it takes to hire them. The equipment isn't cheap, and the entire stack of knowledge you need to hire in spiders out significantly, and with the lack of experience likely would take a long time to truly fill all the knowledge gaps. It may not be obvious what you're lacking until you start hitting walls. Bootstrapping via external investors experienced in the sector is way faster, but comes with costs, as shown in the deals here. But that's true in every market.
IncreasePosts 1y ago
That's essentially what happened. Good luck negotiating when it is well known that if you don't get a deal, you'll get $0. Whereas those with oil expertise can easily go to other potentially productive oil fields.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Back then they wouldn't have had lateral drilling abilities. Otherwise, they'd just sit in their space taking your oil before you even knew you had oil

boringg 1y ago

They didn't have anything - not just the mechanical technology, the talent, the market, the capital, infrastructure or the use case.

hamonrye 1y ago

Crude oil was developed as therapy to treat arthiritic along the Caspian sea.

oa335 1y ago

> The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. Comment you replied to is talking about the history of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Iran is outside the Arab world.

dredmorbius 1y ago
It's difficult to come up with a comprehensive name that encompasses the oil-rich lands within eastern / middle-eastern / central Asia, north Africa, and south-eastern Europe. I'm strongly reminded of Peter Adamson's Google Lecture on philosophy in the Islamic World, which is almost entirely dedicated to the matter of why he calls it the Islamic World, rather than Arabic, Persian, Islam, or several other possible names. Ideas are maps, and here the map fits the terrain fairly poorly. Any term is going to have its inaccuracies, and will inflate or neglect one or more parties. Ultimately, though, that specific matter is of very limited interest or discussion potential.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  Resource cursed countries?
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    That too, but there's the geographical continuity which spans continents (at least as we generally classify them), cultures, language, and religion. Resource curse isn't oil specific, and you might include some remote outliers into that group as well: Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria, for example, all oil producers, and numerous others throughout the world based on other natural resources, with Nauru being perhaps the most spectacular boom-bust case. The question of how / why / whether the US avoided the resource curse is another interesting one. I'd argue that it's similar to the case of the UK, in that 1) energy resources and industrialisation arose more-or-less simultaneously, 2) in a world with no industrial rivals and 3) with a fairly wide regional variance in both. In the case of the US, industry settled largely in the Great Lakes / North-East regions, whilst energy was focused in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. The latter three far more resemble resource-cursed countries in their economic, political, and socioeconomic profiles, though much of that is tied up in ... other historical baggage, to avoid taking this thread entirely off the rails ;-)

BeetleB 1y ago

> The prevailing view is “the British came in and took our oil.” No one thinks that in Saudi Arabia, because it is not remotely true.

dredmorbius 1y ago
No, in Saudia Arabia, it was the Americans. Editing/Updating to note: yes, the British were involved, somewhat, but for various reasons the UK had a far greater influence in Persia, and the US in Saudi Arabia, particularly following the Great Bitter Lake meeting between Kind Saud and FDR, very shortly before the latter's death, during WWII. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_oil_industry_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_oil_industry_in...> (Also covered in The Prize which is mentioned by myself and others elsewhere in this thread.)

dredmorbius 1y ago

For anyone interested in learning that history, I cannot recommend highly enough Daniel Yergin's book The Prize (1990), and its companion PBS series of the same title (1992). <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_Oil,_Money,_and_Power#Adaptations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_...> That recommendation comes despite the fact that Yergin is an unapologetic booster of the petroleum industry. The simple fact is that he's written an exquisitely researched and detailed history of oil in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the tremendous changes it produced. This includes ample coverage of oil development throughout the Middle-East and North Africa (and of course, elsewhere).

rayiner 1y ago
Thanks!