April 13, 2010
The Oil Kingdom
The Energy Within – A Photo History of the People of Saudi Aramco.
This book is a photo records for the company Saudi Aramco, and the Saudi Arabians’ life reflection. The living standards got high improved; Saudi Arabia became one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 1950s.
Saudi Aramco is the state-owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia. The book gives the introductions about how the company originated, developed and expanded. It is very interesting to see all developments of this particular company since oil exports made up to 40% of Saudi Arabia’s GDP.
America was involved with the company’s establishment. In the year 1933, the Standard Oil Company of California completed a concession agreement. This agreement leaded to the discovery the greatest energy reserves the world has ever seen, thus speeding the rapid transformation of Saudi Arabia into a Modern nation-state.
After searching for some documentary film about this company, I found out that the famous program 60 Minutes by CBS did a film about Aramco’s new plantation developments in the city
The program is called “The Oil Kingdom”. In this documentary, the reporter Laeley Stahl went to the city Shay bah where the new plantation located. The city is in middle of endless dessert with extreme high temperatures. The logistics are difficult. The corporation had to spend tons of money on the roads, pipelines just to get there. In the photo album, here are 2 pages I scanned from it to show how difficult to get the oil out of the ground.
These plantation produced 14 billion barrels (2.2×109 m3) of crude oil and 25 trillion cubic feet (710 km3) of gas when first established.
What did Oil trading brought to Saudi Arabia?
1. Wealth
The average income for Saudi Arabia is $18,855, which is ranked
2.Interactions with the outside world.
3.Conflicts
conflicts within the country
conflicts with other countries
Phil said,
May 3, 2010 at 4:54 am
Wei, I posted this commend on the wrong journal. Sorry. I’ll repeat it here:
Phil said,
May 3, 2010 at 4:52 am
A very brief journal. Can you say anything about what the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia might have to do with a person from China? I can–since China today is concerned to secure oil for its development.
C