Word: sheiks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most Western oilmen realize this, yet reform necessarily lags behind royalties. It is easier to extract a million barrels of oil than to educate a whole people to a new, precarious, speeded-up way of life. Moreover, oil companies must beware of interfering too much: the sheik they prod may also cancel their concession. Yet (as Iran proved) if the company doesn't prod, the internal discontent can become so explosive as to endanger its position. Damned if they do, and damned if they don't, the companies move circumspectly, and in most cases with surprising skill...
...Kuwait's Sheik Abdullah al Salim al Sabah will get more than $200 million in oil royalties this year, the biggest oil royalty cut in the world. He probably has the biggest annual income of any man on earth. All this has come to a land no bigger than New Jersey, which was still living meanly at the close of World War II in an economy based mainly on pearling and Gulf shipping. The men responsible for this revolution-in a land where slaveholding is still legal-are a few Westerners, 45 Americans and 625 Britons, representing the Kuwait...
When Kuwait Oil Co. first went into Kuwait 18 years ago, it did not worry too much about pleasing the Sheik or sharing the new-found wealth with the people. Iran changed all that. As soon as Mossadegh got into power, K.O.C. sought out the Sheik-who had been getting a measly royalty of 10^ a barrel-and offered him a 50-50 split of profits, before taxes. This year, facing the pleasant prospect of a return of more than $200 million, the Sheik also faces a problem: how to spend it on his tiny, backward kingdom without creating inflation...
...supply anything from diesel generators to bobby pins. The streets crawl with four-hole Buicks churning up the fine dust (Abdullah plans to pave the streets). When K.O.C. came, there were four elementary schools, 600 boy pupils; now there are 31 schools and 7,500 pupils, including girls. The Sheik has built a 400-bed hospital, a women's hospital, dental clinics...
Evidently the British think so too. They recently sent an emissary to 70-year-old Sheik Shakabut at his cement fort, decorated him as Commander of the Order of the British Empire...