Oil Addiction: The World in Peril - 19
by Pierre Chomat (Universal Publishers, 2004)
translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
Part III. The Power of America: Rooted in Dependency
Chapter 19. The Wahhabis Face West
Saudi Arabia is the world's leading petroleum producer. But in 1930, its Bedouin inhabitants still did not know that they had gold under their slippers. Although England had already obtained mineral exploration rights from the Saudis, petroleum reserves had yet to be discovered on the Arabian Peninsula. The region was politically unstable, to put it mildly. It was not until Abd-el-Aziz III Ibn Saud unified the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 that prospecting operations could go forward. Ibn Saud was a powerful ruler, but he did not have the funds to enhance his lifestyle in keeping with his new status. He began to grow impatient watching foreign geologists run all over other Middle Eastern countries while his own kingdom was ignored. Finally, in 1933, fed up with England's lack of enthusiasm, Ibn Saud happily awarded an oil concession to Standard Oil of California after many trials and tribulations. Standard Oil ferreted out a huge oil field on the eastern side of the peninsula across from the island of Bahrain, and grew rapidly to become the famous Arabian American Oil Company, better known as Aramco, a company owned 100% by Standard Oil. It still exists today under the name of Saudi Aramco, although the American companies are no longer shareholders.
This agreement notwithstanding, in 1933 Saudi Arabia was still a de facto British protectorate and was not officially recognized by the United States. Across the Atlantic the new king was considered a sovereign of little importance and in the halls of Congress it was even said that the Wahhabi religion {a} did not serve the cause of humanity. But the rank and prestige of the Wahhabis rose precipitously once the black gold started gushing out of Aramco's wells in quantities that provoked the envy of other oil companies throughout the world.
Within ten years, American oil interests were firmly established in the Middle East, mainly at the expense of the British. By 1944, Standard Oil of California, through Aramco, had nearly all of Saudi Arabia under concession and was present in Kuwait as well. In addition, a group of American oil companies had succeeded in partnering with the British in Iraq. The British companies, however, retained control over the oil of former Persia, which had been renamed Iran by Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1935. Anglo-Persian Oil became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), but its lackadaisical attitude toward paying royalties remained the same. Apart from some minor French and Dutch holdings, the British also controlled all the oil fields of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The British, who had defended the Middle East militarily throughout World War II from 1939 to 1945, still claimed total authority over the region, including Saudi Arabia. This was "their" territory. Their might was shown to be highly effective when the Germans tried unsuccessfully to oust them, both diplomatically and militarily, from the area. By crushing German General Erwin Rommel's forces in the Libyan Desert, the English prevented the Germans once and for all from achieving their goal of taking over the Middle East's oil fields. This was an important Allied victory.
World War II proved that the Middle East is not only a source of enormous profit to the companies that develop its hydrocarbon reserves, but also that it is a crucial strategic region to the entire industrialized world, which cannot live without its oil. Hence, after the war the British and Americans began to wage a merciless batde for control over this treasure, all under the guise of good will. From secret negotiations to the most ruthless conspiracies, the Americans employed every means at their disposal to usurp the position so jealously guarded by the English in the Middle East. Their objective was crystal clear: to plant their oil derricks over every existing hydrocarbon reserve. The methods of their secret agents never gave them the slightest pang of conscience.
Many European nations still had colonial empires at that time. President Franklin Roosevelt accused them of fostering special relationships within their empires that left few openings for eager US commerce. To pry open some of these closed doors, Roosevelt championed the "open door" policy, especially in areas of particular interest to American business. England remained as determined as ever to maintain control and asserted that the Empire was still British. But that was wishful thinking.
In 1944, the British charge d'affaires in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, informed the London Foreign Office that, "Among American businessmen and in the Republican Party there are fairly clear ideas about a system of informal empire by which the United States would control economic resources without formal annexation". {25} The Republican Party, then the minority party, wanted to begin sending US companies, which were supposed to be politically independent, to do the subtle work of exploitation that could not be termed outright colonization.
While the rest of the world was not looking, the more ambitious nations had just shifted the classic paradigm slightly. The need to control a society by colonization in order to have access to its resources and labor had been replaced by simply setting up one's companies on foreign soil in order to master the Earth's major resources. Traditional colonization was too demanding an endeavor for the New World; it had no intention of involving itself in the societies of the countries that it planned to exploit.
Britain finally had to resign itself to the fact that America had its foot in the door of its Empire. Seriously weakened by war, it could no longer claim to be able to defend the Middle East's petroleum fields all alone. These fields had become a magnet for the entire world. It had to accept the growing US presence on its territories.
In February 1945, President Roosevelt sat down with Stalin and Churchill in Yalta to map out the postwar world. Before returning to the White House, he sent a message to King Ibn Saud saying, "I would be happy to make your acquaintance during my stay in Alexandria". {26} After Roosevelt arrived in Egypt, an American destroyer graciously carried King Ibn Saud and his entire retinue across the Red Sea from Jeddah to the mouth of the Suez Canal. The meeting took place on the Quincy, the cruiser that would take the President on his long journey home. The Quincy Accords marked the beginning of the US monopoly over many Saudi oil fields, including one of the biggest reserves of ergamines ever discovered, near Dhahran.
During the year that followed, the United States kept up intense diplomatic relations with King Ibn Saud's entourage. The king had to choose between the United States and England, and he chose United States, not only to develop his oil fields, but also to develop his nation's infrastructure. Military protection was also near the top of his list. At that time, the Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan and Syria still claimed ancestral rights to the holy sites of the Arabian Peninsula; it was time they understood that these rights could no longer be exercised.
The oil fields discovered in Saudi Arabia by the United States turned out to be phenomenal. Aramco possessed a treasure. This is still true today. It will prove even truer tomorrow.
The year 1945 was pivotal in the history of the world. It marked not only the end of the Second World War, but also the year Eastern Europe was abandoned to the USSR for real-life experiments with the Utopian "social medicine" of the "Great" Marx. Another very important event took place that year as well: the decline of Western Europe and the rise of the United States. America took over as the head of a new "empire". Western Europe and Japan, happy just to be alive after the terrible war that had left them in ruins, became its willing satellites.
The world's latest empire would prove to be, above all things, an oil addict!
Notes
{a} The Wahhabis are a puritanical Muslim sect founded in the 18th century by Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab in the Nejd province of Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis have ruled this province almost continuously since 1803, and have ruled Saudi Arabia since it was unified. Wahhabism is the State religion of Saudi Arabia.
{25} Anthony Cave Brown, Oil, God and Gold (New York: Houghton Mifflin), 116.
{26} Benoist-Mechin, Ibn Seoud (Paris, France: Editions Albin Michel, 1955), 346.
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
Part III. The Power of America: Rooted in Dependency
Chapter 19. The Wahhabis Face West
Saudi Arabia is the world's leading petroleum producer. But in 1930, its Bedouin inhabitants still did not know that they had gold under their slippers. Although England had already obtained mineral exploration rights from the Saudis, petroleum reserves had yet to be discovered on the Arabian Peninsula. The region was politically unstable, to put it mildly. It was not until Abd-el-Aziz III Ibn Saud unified the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 that prospecting operations could go forward. Ibn Saud was a powerful ruler, but he did not have the funds to enhance his lifestyle in keeping with his new status. He began to grow impatient watching foreign geologists run all over other Middle Eastern countries while his own kingdom was ignored. Finally, in 1933, fed up with England's lack of enthusiasm, Ibn Saud happily awarded an oil concession to Standard Oil of California after many trials and tribulations. Standard Oil ferreted out a huge oil field on the eastern side of the peninsula across from the island of Bahrain, and grew rapidly to become the famous Arabian American Oil Company, better known as Aramco, a company owned 100% by Standard Oil. It still exists today under the name of Saudi Aramco, although the American companies are no longer shareholders.
This agreement notwithstanding, in 1933 Saudi Arabia was still a de facto British protectorate and was not officially recognized by the United States. Across the Atlantic the new king was considered a sovereign of little importance and in the halls of Congress it was even said that the Wahhabi religion {a} did not serve the cause of humanity. But the rank and prestige of the Wahhabis rose precipitously once the black gold started gushing out of Aramco's wells in quantities that provoked the envy of other oil companies throughout the world.
Within ten years, American oil interests were firmly established in the Middle East, mainly at the expense of the British. By 1944, Standard Oil of California, through Aramco, had nearly all of Saudi Arabia under concession and was present in Kuwait as well. In addition, a group of American oil companies had succeeded in partnering with the British in Iraq. The British companies, however, retained control over the oil of former Persia, which had been renamed Iran by Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1935. Anglo-Persian Oil became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), but its lackadaisical attitude toward paying royalties remained the same. Apart from some minor French and Dutch holdings, the British also controlled all the oil fields of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The British, who had defended the Middle East militarily throughout World War II from 1939 to 1945, still claimed total authority over the region, including Saudi Arabia. This was "their" territory. Their might was shown to be highly effective when the Germans tried unsuccessfully to oust them, both diplomatically and militarily, from the area. By crushing German General Erwin Rommel's forces in the Libyan Desert, the English prevented the Germans once and for all from achieving their goal of taking over the Middle East's oil fields. This was an important Allied victory.
World War II proved that the Middle East is not only a source of enormous profit to the companies that develop its hydrocarbon reserves, but also that it is a crucial strategic region to the entire industrialized world, which cannot live without its oil. Hence, after the war the British and Americans began to wage a merciless batde for control over this treasure, all under the guise of good will. From secret negotiations to the most ruthless conspiracies, the Americans employed every means at their disposal to usurp the position so jealously guarded by the English in the Middle East. Their objective was crystal clear: to plant their oil derricks over every existing hydrocarbon reserve. The methods of their secret agents never gave them the slightest pang of conscience.
Many European nations still had colonial empires at that time. President Franklin Roosevelt accused them of fostering special relationships within their empires that left few openings for eager US commerce. To pry open some of these closed doors, Roosevelt championed the "open door" policy, especially in areas of particular interest to American business. England remained as determined as ever to maintain control and asserted that the Empire was still British. But that was wishful thinking.
In 1944, the British charge d'affaires in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, informed the London Foreign Office that, "Among American businessmen and in the Republican Party there are fairly clear ideas about a system of informal empire by which the United States would control economic resources without formal annexation". {25} The Republican Party, then the minority party, wanted to begin sending US companies, which were supposed to be politically independent, to do the subtle work of exploitation that could not be termed outright colonization.
While the rest of the world was not looking, the more ambitious nations had just shifted the classic paradigm slightly. The need to control a society by colonization in order to have access to its resources and labor had been replaced by simply setting up one's companies on foreign soil in order to master the Earth's major resources. Traditional colonization was too demanding an endeavor for the New World; it had no intention of involving itself in the societies of the countries that it planned to exploit.
Britain finally had to resign itself to the fact that America had its foot in the door of its Empire. Seriously weakened by war, it could no longer claim to be able to defend the Middle East's petroleum fields all alone. These fields had become a magnet for the entire world. It had to accept the growing US presence on its territories.
In February 1945, President Roosevelt sat down with Stalin and Churchill in Yalta to map out the postwar world. Before returning to the White House, he sent a message to King Ibn Saud saying, "I would be happy to make your acquaintance during my stay in Alexandria". {26} After Roosevelt arrived in Egypt, an American destroyer graciously carried King Ibn Saud and his entire retinue across the Red Sea from Jeddah to the mouth of the Suez Canal. The meeting took place on the Quincy, the cruiser that would take the President on his long journey home. The Quincy Accords marked the beginning of the US monopoly over many Saudi oil fields, including one of the biggest reserves of ergamines ever discovered, near Dhahran.
During the year that followed, the United States kept up intense diplomatic relations with King Ibn Saud's entourage. The king had to choose between the United States and England, and he chose United States, not only to develop his oil fields, but also to develop his nation's infrastructure. Military protection was also near the top of his list. At that time, the Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan and Syria still claimed ancestral rights to the holy sites of the Arabian Peninsula; it was time they understood that these rights could no longer be exercised.
The oil fields discovered in Saudi Arabia by the United States turned out to be phenomenal. Aramco possessed a treasure. This is still true today. It will prove even truer tomorrow.
The year 1945 was pivotal in the history of the world. It marked not only the end of the Second World War, but also the year Eastern Europe was abandoned to the USSR for real-life experiments with the Utopian "social medicine" of the "Great" Marx. Another very important event took place that year as well: the decline of Western Europe and the rise of the United States. America took over as the head of a new "empire". Western Europe and Japan, happy just to be alive after the terrible war that had left them in ruins, became its willing satellites.
The world's latest empire would prove to be, above all things, an oil addict!
Notes
{a} The Wahhabis are a puritanical Muslim sect founded in the 18th century by Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab in the Nejd province of Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis have ruled this province almost continuously since 1803, and have ruled Saudi Arabia since it was unified. Wahhabism is the State religion of Saudi Arabia.
{25} Anthony Cave Brown, Oil, God and Gold (New York: Houghton Mifflin), 116.
{26} Benoist-Mechin, Ibn Seoud (Paris, France: Editions Albin Michel, 1955), 346.
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
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