Oil Discoveries off the Arabian Shore

50 years on from the first oil and gas discoveries in the North Sea we celebrate this golden anniversary by looking back at this important center of oil and gas production, set in silver but often turbulent seas.

In this second part of the Standard Oil story, we profile John D. Rockefeller, the man who founded the world’s first large oil company, which was forced by the US anti-trust law to dissolve into several independent companies exactly one hundred years ago.

At a time when oil prices spiralled down from over $100 to below $50 within half a year, talking about ‘oil shock’ may seem odd. Yet, the oil shock of 1973–74 was not only the first of its kind on a global scale, but also set the political-economic stage for oil shocks and oil market crashes in the following decades.

On a dream – and a bit too close to her garden – the old wooden derrick was skidded to its third location on Mrs. Daisy Bradford’s 970 acre, East Texas farm… this would be the one.

Knowledgeable but squabbling geologists; summary dismissals; camel transport; ‘lagoonal’ oil; and 40m-high gushers. All in a day’s work for the first oil explorers in Iraq.

Formed just as the first discoveries were being made in the North Sea, the Petroleum Society of Great Britain’s mission is to promote, for the public benefit, education in the scientific and technical aspects of petroleum exploration.

2014 marks the centenary of the beginning of World War One. The Great War, as it was generally referred to in Europe, heralded a major shift in political power across the Western World, Asia and Africa. It also witnessed the emergence of the modern oil and gas industry.

A prelude to the great discoveries of the North Sea, the onshore oilfields provide a fascinating insight into the history of UK oil.

East Africa is the emerging hydrocarbon province of the 21st Century - but it is worth remembering that this success comes after six decades of unsuccessful exploration.

In 2003, the fall of Saddam Hussein opened up semi-autonomous Kurdistan to foreign investment. It also revived the interest of oil companies in the region, which had been explored, but not developed, by the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) between 1946 and 1961.

A consortium of four oil majors (today’s BP, Shell, Total and ExxonMobil) and oil magnate Calouste Gulbenkian, the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was designed to explore and extract oil in the Middle East. Amid controversy about its role as the ‘Red Line Cartel’, its pioneering contribution to the oil development of the region is often overlooked.

The recent shale gas boom is a reminder that the effective use of hydraulic fracturing in shale formations is a relatively new phenomenon. However, this ‘fracking’ (also called 'fracing’ or ‘fraccing’ in the technical literature) has been around for longer than many people realise, and the use of unconventional techniques to extract oil and gas from the ground has developed over more than 150 years.

Yemen is a land of physical contrasts, bounded by mountains, desert and sea. It includes the Socotra archipelago and various islands in the Red Sea. At the heart of the south, like a deep gash across the land, is the Hadhramaut Valley. The geology of the region intrigued the early explorers, as it continues to do today. They had to overcome considerable political and physical difficulties as well as grapple with a complex geological puzzle that had its origins in the breakup of Gondwanaland.

“A woman with a genius for affairs – it may sound paradoxical, but the fact exists. If Mrs. Emma A. Summers were less than a genius she could not, as she does today, control the Los Angeles oil markets.” – The San Francisco Call, July 21, 1901