Iraqi Kurdistan All in the Timing

History of Oil
The Petroleum Gulf
Oil Discoveries off the Arabian Shore
MICHAEL QUENTIN MORTON
The pearl industry, which had once been
the mainstay of the Gulf states, was in
decline when the first oil was struck on
Bahrain in 1932. Discoveries in Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait followed in 1938, and
Qatar in 1940. It dawned on the oilmen
that there was a good possibility of finding
oil offshore in the region: the Arabian side
of the Gulf has similarities with the Gulf
of Mexico, where the modern offshore
oil industry began, both having relatively
shallow waters conducive to drilling from
simple structures or barges.
After a lull during World War II,
interest in offshore exploration revived,
spurred on by President Truman’s
proclamation of 1945, which effectively
extended US jurisdiction over the natural
resources of the subsoil and seabed
of its entire continental shelf. Similar
proclamations followed in 1949 from the
rulers of the Arabian littoral, the Gulf
sheikhs, in respect of their own seabed
resources. But there were serious logistical
obstacles to working offshore, since the
Gulf sheikhdoms were undeveloped,
lacked basic infrastructure and bore
no comparison with the commercial
environment of the United States at that
time. Great Britain was the predominant
foreign power in the region, and sought
to restrict the access of non-British
firms through a network of treaties and
undertakings with the local rulers.
In Saudi Arabia, where British
influence was waning, the government
decided to work with the onshore
concessionaire, the Arabian American
Oil Company (Aramco). In 1939, Dick
Kerr, an Aramco geophysicist, had drawn
a red arrow on a map of north-east Saudi
Arabia, writing alongside: “possible high
area offshore”. The arrow pointed out
into the Gulf past a hooked spit of white
sand called Safaniya, translated as “the
place where navigators meet”. In 1949,
offshore drilling began there and Kerr’s
prediction proved to be correct, with the
“high area” indicating the presence of an
In that gulf, there was no continental shelf; its waters were
not very deep and nowhere exceeded 75 fathoms. The geologists
had ascertained that the geological structure of the soil beneath the
sea was the same as that of the adjacent territory which contained
immense reserves of mineral oil. Consequently fantastic deposits of
oil would certainly be discovered.
Judge Manley O. Hudson, 1950
Casting the lead aboard SS Bandra off the Saudi Arabian coast in July 1935. The shallowness of the
Arabian Gulf often required soundings to be taken, but also made it highly accessible for oil exploration.
Source: John D. Mountain, Smithsonian Library
48 GEOExPro November 2015