Defying the experts

At a time of rapid price increases, our natural resources seem ever more precious and their future more uncertain. In particular, the arguments of advocates of “peak oil,” who assert that global oil production has now climaxed and will start to decline, appear increasingly plausible.

Fortunately, however, a coming centenary puts their claims into a timely and fitting perspective. Almost 100 years ago – on May 26, 1908 – British geologists, working in a remote Persian wilderness, first discovered oil in the Middle East.

Remarkable though it may now seem, almost all experts of the day felt that the Middle East was largely barren of oil. True, there was limited evidence that some parts of Persia and Mesopotamia (later Iraq) had petroleum deposits, but there was no reason to suppose that these existed in commercial quantities. Several efforts had been made to discover deposits, but these failed explorations succeeded only in driving their sponsors into bankruptcy and even madness.

The failings of expert opinion were much more glaring in the case of other Middle Eastern countries. Several highly eminent British geologists had taken a close look at the region and typically concluded that Arabia did not “present any decided promise for drilling on oil.”

IHT