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N0KFQ > TODAY 23.09.16 15:54l 50 Lines 2446 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 8243_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Sep 23
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<F1OYP<ON0AR<OZ5BBS<CX2SA<N0KFQ
Sent: 160923/1430Z 8243@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.12
1933
Standard Oil geologists arrive in Saudi Arabia
On September 23, 1933, a party of American geologists lands at
the Persian Gulf port of Jubail in Saudi Arabia and begins its
journey into the desert. That July, with the discovery of a
massive oil field at Ghawar, Saudi King Abdel Aziz had granted
the Standard Oil Company of California a concession to "explore
and search for and drill and extract and manufacture and
transport" petroleum and "kindred bituminous matter" in the
country's vast Eastern Province; in turn, Standard Oil
immediately dispatched the team of scientists to locate the most
profitable spot for the company to begin its drilling.
As automobiles and other internal-combustion machines
proliferated, both in the United States and around the globe,
Standard Oil was eager to control as much of the market for
gasoline as it could. As a result, it would do almost anything to
have first dibs on Saudi oil. The partnership between Abdel
Aziz's government and Standard Oil became known as the Arabian
American Oil Company (Aramco). (Texaco soon joined the
partnership; about a decade later, so did Standard Oil of New
Jersey and Socony-Vacuum Oil.) The company promised to provide
the Saudi government with a steady income, along with an outright
payment of 50,0000 British pounds; in return, Aramco got
exclusive rights to all the oil underneath the eastern desert. In
1938, the company's gamble (after all, while Aramco engineers
knew there was oil in the region, no one knew exactly where or
how much) paid off: its geologists and drillers discovered oil in
"commercial quantities" at the Dammam Dome, near Dhahran. The
next year, Aramco exported its first tanker-load of petroleum.
In 1950, once it had become clear how very much oil there was
under that desert, Aramco agreed to split its profits with the
Saudi government. In 1980, after several years of squabbling over
the price and availability of the country's petroleum (Saudi
Arabia was a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries, or OPEC, whose 1973 embargo precipitated a
massive fuel crisis in the United States and other parts of the
industrial world), Saudis won total control of the company: It's
now known as Saudi Aramco. The next year, the kingdom's oil
revenues reached $118 billion.
73 - K.O., n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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