Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Trucial Sheiks (socalled because they signed truces with the British to stop piracy) are hopeful. A subsidiary of Iraq Petroleum (which is American, British, French and Dutch owned) is prospecting the area for oil, meanwhile paying the Sheiks a small subsidy. So far the wells have been dry, but the drillers-a hardbitten, windburned American crew who live in primitive tent camps, drinking distilled water, eating out of cans-are convinced that next year fortune will strike the sheikdoms...
Enter the ubiquitous Iraq Petroleum Co., through a subsidiary, called Petroleum Development (Qatar) Ltd. It dragged in equipment, pitched tents, and started exploring for oil. By the time war broke out in 1939, Qatar was ready to begin production. The British ordered the wells jammed, to prevent their capture and use by the enemy; Qatar went back to sleep...
...Bahrein Petroleum Co., jointly owned by two American companies, the Texas Co. and Standard of California (but registered as a Canadian corporation), discovered oil. Production has risen slowly to 30,000 barrels daily, which is about the best Bahrein can do. Some day, perhaps in 20 years, all of Bahrein's oil will be gone...
...right, and has been since recorded history. Noah caulked his Ark "within and without with pitch" taken from bitumen springs in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley. Just a few hundred yards from where Nebuchadnezzar, "full of fury," cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the fiery, oil-fed furnace, Iraq Petroleum (then called Turkish Petroleum) in 1927 blew in its first well with a gush that could not be controlled for three days. Iraq's proven reserve (7.5 billion barrels in the Kirkuk field alone) is within respectable distance of the great Kuwait and Saudi Arabian holdings...
...before World War I, but the Germans cut in and both were stymied. They made a deal and were about to start work when the war interfered. In 1920, with the Germans ousted, the French insisted on getting into the act; then the Americans set up a clamor. Turkish Petroleum was renamed Iraq Petroleum and was divided between Britain, France, the U.S. and The Netherlands, with each holding 23.75%. The remaining 5% went appropriately to the wily old Armenian influence-peddler who got them together: Calouste S. Gulbenkian, another candidate for richest man in the world...