Discuss the history of the oil industry in the Middle East, including North Africa - Essay Example

The production capacity between these two sides is looked into details to give a precise account of the history of oil production. Analysis Oil deposits were discovered in the Middle East and were collected for a variety of uses; by then there was no venture of exploitation for commercial purpose. This was the period of 18th century and the petroleum found was used as a new source of fuel. Oil exploitation for commercial purposes started officially in the 19th century. It was discovered that the Middle East had great oil reserves and, therefore, this impacted the decision of oil exploitation (Beltran, 234-239).

When it was noted that Persia had oil deposits, the British business man called D’Arcy William asked the Persian government to grant him a concession to be able to explore oil in the country. They agreed at sharing the profit from the oil that would be extracted and share at a given percentage. He started officially extracting oil and making great sales within the period but along the way he ran bankrupt and, therefore, sorted assistance from the British government. During that period, around 1905, a British company named Burmah Oil was the only one operating in that region and was in a stable condition and able to ran the exploitation processes efficiently.

Therefore the British government pressurized the company to give William the necessary assistance that he required to continue with the extraction processes so as to avoid a situation where he could have sold it another state or company. The company accepted the offer and several ventures were made to exploit the oil deposits. After 1905, several advances were conducted within the Middle East and large amounts of oil deposits were discovered. These lead to an increase in the percentage of oil production within the Middle East.

Oil was further discovered in the areas of Arabia, peninsula Caspian Sea, Iraq and Kuwait. Till this period, the exploitation and extraction were only done by the companies and the countries only received concessions. These means that the countries were receiving so much less of the actual produce profit. The problem arose to the fact that the money received from the share profit of the oil extraction was poorly used by the corrupt members of government. The end result was that the whole nation was not benefiting from the oil extraction projects, but only the elite members of the country.

These led to backward growth of the economy of the countries. Take, for example, Venezuela: it was faced by extreme corruption and overexploitation of the only resource that was supposed to support the whole country which led to the crumbling of the economy. Within the Middle East, politics started taking tall and affecting oil exploitation. Another problem arose at the start of the World War II where oil deposits were being bombed to cripple the energy sector of the army. The U.S and Europe which was producing plenty of petroleum decided to fuel its allies in the war, which created a big problem to the Middle East.

The Muslims were unable to concentrate in the production of oil and the U.S found a chance to control the oil exploitation (Cook, 56-76). A report that was conducted by the team of DeGoyler reported to the state department that Saud Arabia was sitting on oil deposits worth 20 billion dollars. The real estimate of oil