Map of Near and Middle East Oil 1965
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A 1965 map of the Near and Middle East oil fields is shared, sparking discussion about its historical significance, geopolitical context, and the evolution of the region's energy landscape.
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Heavy lines traverse the map, notably from Iraq (Kirkuk) to the Mediterranean (Tripoli, Haifa) ...
I can see the pipeline from Kirkuk to Tripoli on the map, but the pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa is hallucinated and not on the map. Or perhaps the description is stolen from elsewhere rather than based on the map itself.
The first red flags.
Conclusion
The map is a diagram of networks—pipelines, oilfields, terminals, company concessions, and shipping routes—depicting the Middle East’s oil as a vast, interdependent system. These networks are both physical (infrastructure) and abstract (ownership, contracts), making the map a powerful tool for understanding the strategic importance and international entanglement of oil in the mid-20th century. AI analysis.
And now the last paragraph literally says "AI analysis".
> It's not AI slop, it's probably not even AI. You simply are unable to parse the description, or the map, or both.
Yeah, right.
"In 1913, shortly before World War I, APOC managers negotiated with a new customer, Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill, as a part of a three-year expansion program, sought to modernise Britain's Royal Navy by abandoning the use of coal-fired steamships and adopting oil as fuel..."
"Persian popular opposition to the D'Arcy oil concession and royalty terms whereby Persia only received 16% of net profits was widespread."
"By the end of April 1933, a new agreement was finally forged. The concession area was reduced by three-quarters. Persia was guaranteed a fixed royalty of four shillings per ton, which protected it against fluctuations in oil prices. At the same time, it would receive 20 percent of the company's worldwide profits that were actually distributed to shareholders above a certain minimum sum. In addition, a minimum annual payment of £750,000, irrespective of other developments, was guaranteed."
"Truman and US ambassador to Iran Henry F. Grady opposed intervention in Iran but needed Britain's support for the Korean War."
"BP was incorporated in London in 1954 as a holding company called Iranian Oil Participants Ltd (IOP).[41][42] The founding members of IOP included British Petroleum (40%), Gulf Oil (8%), Royal Dutch Shell (14%), and Compagnie Française des Pétroles (now TotalEnergies SE, 6%). The four Aramco partners — Standard Oil of California (SoCal, later Chevron), Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon), Standard Oil Co. of New York (later Mobil), and Texaco – each held an 8% stake in the holding company.[41][43] In addition, these companies paid Anglo-Iranian about $90 million for their 60 percent share in the consortium, and a further $500 million, paid out of a ten cent per barrel royalty. The Shah signed the agreement on 29 October 1954, and oil flowed from Abadan the next day. Within a few months each of the American companies contributed 1 percent to Iricon, a consortium made up of nine independent American companies, which included Phillips, Richfield, Standard of Ohio, and Ashland."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company
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.
Before the Renaissance, rock-oil/petroleum was used mostly for waterproofing as tar, with a few other medicinal and military uses.
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.nap...
https://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/islmoil1.html
Those who had the tech, capital and expertise in the end just lined up in front of Saudis to be hired.
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.
Comment you replied to is talking about the history of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Iran is outside the Arab world.
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.
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 ;-)
No one thinks that in Saudi Arabia, because it is not remotely true.
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...>
(Also covered in The Prize which is mentioned by myself and others elsewhere in this thread.)
<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).
In 1930-s there was a chance for Saudi Arabia to become close with the USSR. It had diplomatic relations and wanted assistance from the USSR, in particular in obtaining enough fuel.
"one year later he was recalled to Moscow where he was arrested one year later on the false denunciation. On the 10th of January in 1938 Red Pasha was cut short. Repressions of «Red Pasha» and the follow-up execution made a great impression on representatives of the ruling till now dynasty of the Saudi Arabia Kingdom – diplomatic relations between that country and the USSR were broken off in 1938 after Khakimov’s withdrawal and they were not resumed till the fall of the communist system in the Soviet Union."
Britain was a naval power, and in the early 20th century was rich in several factors that served as a basis for that, including iron and coal, as well as access (through trade) to the essentials of munitions manufacture (saltpetre, an ingredient in gunpowder and other propellants, was abundant in India).
But coal-fired ships were cumbersome to manage: solid coal had to be physically handled when fueling ships initially, in re-bunkering coal as it was consumed in transit, and of course, being shoveled into the boilers themselves.
Petroleum, by contrast, flowed through pipes, by gravity or with the assistance of pumps. Fueling, bunkering, and operational procedures were streamlined remarkably. Ships also gained vastly greater performance flexibility: direct-combustion engines (diesel or turbine) could be powered up or down in seconds, rather than the many minutes or hours to increase steam-based output. And of course petroleum enabled the two great 20th century advances in naval power: submarines and aircraft, of which the technological history of coal-fired variants is brief.
(Not non-existant, however. The British Navy deployed K-Class submarines, coal powered, in WWI, and the Germans experimented with a coal-dust burning airplane in WWII, see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_K-class_submarine> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippisch_P.13a>.)
Britain's problem in 1913 however was that the country had no domestic oil production capacity. (The North Sea oil fields wouldn't be proven and developed until the 1960s.) Switching from (domestic) coal to (foreign) oil was a tremendous gamble, and required sea-lane control to the Middle East, as well as control of the Suez Canal for greatly-reduced shipping costs.
The story of oil in both World Wars is probably the most fascinating aspect of Yergin's book. WWI in particular started with cavalry charges and horsecarts, and ended with tanks, submarines, and bombers. During WWII, a critical element in the Allied invasion of mainland Europe was the establishment of an oil pipeline, in Operation Pluto, initially consisting of a single two inch diameter cross-channel pipe. Through those two inches flowed the material which made mechanised invasion possible.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pluto>
(Appropriation of German "Jerry Cans" --- Wehrmacht-Einheitskanister to its creators --- was also a huge strategic gain. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan>)
Churchill did not know it at the time, but he was the peak of the empire. Physically the empire was untenable, but in business there was a new world of influence. I sometimes compare early Churchill to the business adventures of Averill Harriman and Prescott Bush.
https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/ro...
Whale oil may have been big business in the 18th century, but the entire history of whale-hunting produced the equivalent of a few days of present petroleum extraction in terms of fuel.
Oh, and Whale hunting did in fact continue through the 20th century, petroleum didn't save the whales, as has been discussed here: <https://edconway.substack.com/p/no-kerosene-did-not-save-the...> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43584303> (April 2025). Aristotle Onasis, whom I've already mentioned in this thread, not only owned oil tankers and supertankers, but built some of the largest whaling ships ever commissioned, specifically to hunt blue whales:
<https://www.greece.org/poseidon/work/modern-times/onassis.ht...>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle_Onassis#Whaling>
I'm not entirely sure what Churhill knew or when, but the British Empire was already creaking (along with much of the rest of the 19th-century European political establishment) even before the onset of WWI (and was in fact a major contributing factor to that war), and was obviously weakened and foundering prior to WWII, which was the coup de grâce.
This is bound to shape the geopolitics of the region.
Egypt has some small hope of reversing its economic decline.
A direct pipeline from the field to Europe, via Greece and Italy is contentious.
Israel invades Gaza to claim offshore resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169354
> "Original large colour-printed map of the Middle East (95 x 126 cm), laid down onto board and in original frame, unglazed. Includes detailed inset maps of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey (2x), and Kamaran (Yemen). Also included is a detailed table entitled ‘Owners of Concessions, Leases, Permits, & Contracts’, 4x statistical tables on the production and consumption of oil, and a detailed key. Extremely rare, genuinely imposing and highly attractive map that showcases the petroleum industry across the Middle East and adjacent regions.
> It is the seventh edition of a sequence of maps on the subject produced in Fort Worth, Texas, by Brian Orchard Lisle, a flamboyant and well-known oil trade insider, founder of industry-leading magazine The Oil Forum. This map offers an unrivaled visual record of the state of play in the oil industry at a critical stage in its development, when the oil assets of Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait were still controlled by British concerns, although being challenged by nationalist movements.
> It covers an area from the Aegean and Libya in the west, to the frontiers of India in the east, while the Gulf, epicentre of the petroleum world, occupies pride of place. The greatest concentrations of oilfields are located in south-eastern Iran, Kuwait, northern Iraq, the Gulf Coast of Saudi Arabia, and in Bahrain and Qatar, while the Baku oilfields in Soviet Azerbaijan are shown in the far upper area.
> Of the numerous marginal inset maps the most important illustrate the ultra-productive Dhahran-Damman area of Saudi Arabia, with the great Ghawar Field, and the nearby petroleum operations in Qatar and Bahrain.
> The creator of the map, Brian Orchard Lisle (1915–2004), is an enigmatic figure, described in A History of the Twentieth Century in 100 Maps as “an English-born Second World War pilot and later kayaking champion”. In fact, he was born in New York to English parents, his father being “an internationally known journalist in the petroleum and marine industry” and publisher of International Oilman (obituary in The Monitor, 2 December 1959). Brian Lisle joined the staff of World Petroleum in 1934, becoming assistant editor in 1936. In the war he served in the USAAF, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. He is buried in Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. His enduring legacy is the series of impressive oil maps issued under the aegis of Oil Forum: the Caribbean (1952), Northern and Middle Africa (1961), Australasia (1962), and the Far East (1963)."
0: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~3...
My understanding is that the TAPLine was amongst the reasons for Lebanon's significance in the 1950s and 1960s, as this was the transshippment point for Arabian oil headed to Europe (shipped by amongst others Aristotle Onasis's oil tankers). The 1967 Six Days War say a portion of the pipeline running through the Golan Heights fall into Israeli control, though Israel permitted the line to continue operating. The pipeline was damaged by Palestinian activists in 1969, and eventually ceased operating in 1976 with advances in supertankers, political conflicts between states over which the line passed, transit fee disagreements, and breakdowns.
Along with control over the Suez Canal, the TAPline is an instructive lesson in the values and risks of fixed-route transports (physical, data, logical) especially under volatile political and military climates.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure_of_Abu_Musa_and_the_Gr...
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