Word: dhabi
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Five times a day for the past 30 years, thin, threadbare Sheik Shakhbut bin Sultan faced west, bowed low, and prayed for an oil strike. His realm of Abu Dhabi was desperately in need of some good luck. Up and down the Persian Gulf, the states of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran were rolling in oil wealth. But year after year, Abu Dhabi's 25,000 sq. mi. of sand, date palms and barren offshore islands just got hotter, more humid and windswept than before...
Perpetual Truce. But then Allah responded to the sheik's prayers-belatedly, but in overwhelming measure. Two vast oilfields have been tapped by British drilling teams, one at Murban in the sandy interior, the other in the shallow coastal waters of the gulf. Conservative oilmen estimate Abu Dhabi's proven oil reserves at about 3.8 billion bbl., which at present royalty rates would return some $1.4 billion over the years. Ridiculous, say other experts: on the basis of latest discoveries, reserves may be as great as 38 billion...
This has all been rather unsettling to Abu Dhabi, whose 15,000 Bedouins have got along for centuries on piracy, pearl fishing and intertribal raids. In the 19th century, the swift pirate dhows were swept from the gulf by Britain, which established "a perpetual maritime truce"hence the name Trucial States, given to Abu Dhabi and six other sheikdoms. Pearl fishing became unprofitable when the Japanese cleverly introduced cultured pearls to the world. There was nothing left to Abu Dhabi but intrigue: of the twelve predecessors of the present sheik, only three died peacefully in their palace beds. The rest...
...being granted all over the Middle East. Examples: ¶ In Yemen the American Overseas Investment Corp. was exploring a 10,000-sq.-mi. concession in the northwestern coastal plain. It had beaten out the Japanese and the Italians for Yemen rights. ¶ In the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of British Petroleum Co. Ltd. and Compagnie Franchise des Petroles brought in a well that tested out at 2,400 bbl. daily...
...Built at a cost of $3,500,000, it was the most advanced mobile oil-drilling platform ever built, and a device that its owners, British Petroleum Co. and Compagnie Franchise de Petroles, hope will open up a huge new oilfield off the shores of Arabia's Abu Dhabi sheikdom. But while the barge's owners are foreign, the barge itself is thoroughly American, a product of the De Long Corp., one of the nation's fastest-growing and most inventive engineering and construction firms...