Series ・ 10 parts

Middle East Oil: A Century of Power

Long before it powered wars or industry, the black mud that seeped from the ground waterproofed arks, bound temples, and preserved mummies. What did humanity use it for, on the eve of oil becoming the lifeblood of the modern world?

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01 The Age of the "Magic Mud" — Before Black Liquid Moved the World Long before it powered wars or industry, the black mud that seeped from the ground waterproofed arks, bound temples, and preserved mummies. What did humanity use it for, on the eve of oil becoming the lifeblood of the modern world?
02 The Discovery of Black Gold — Churchill's Gamble and 1908 From coal to oil. Churchill staked the fate of the Royal Navy on oil — yet Britain had no oil fields of its own. After a desperate drilling campaign in the Persian wilderness, a single gusher on 26 May 1908 redrew the world's balance of power.
03 War and Partition — How the Borders Were Drawn In the First World War oil became the star of war, and the victorious British and French carved up the Ottoman Empire with a ruler. The artificial borders of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the discovery of Saudi Arabia's giant oil field, and a meeting between America and the Saudis aboard a warship — the skeleton of the modern Middle East was set in this era.
04 The Seven Sisters and the Humiliation — 1953, the Revolution That Was Stolen After the war, oil was ruled by seven giant companies known as the "Seven Sisters." Furious at its meager share, Iran nationalized its oil in 1951 — only for a British blockade and an Anglo-American intelligence operation to bring down Prime Minister Mosaddegh. Why was the first real attempt to reclaim a nation's resources crushed?
05 The Birth of OPEC — The Stirring of Resource Nationalism After the humiliation of the stolen revolution, the producing nations finally chose to unite. OPEC, born in Baghdad in 1960; the hard bargaining of a young Libyan colonel; the 1971 Tehran Agreement — quietly but surely, the hand that set the price began to move from West to East.
06 1973 — The Day Oil Became a Weapon In October 1973, with the Yom Kippur War as the trigger, the Arab oil producers drew oil as a 'weapon.' An embargo and steep price hikes sent crude up roughly fourfold in a matter of months. The world economy was thrown into chaos, and in Japan, paper vanished from store shelves. The initiative passed, at last, from the majors to OPEC.
07 The Iranian Revolution and the Second Oil Shock — 1979 In Iran, a country that should have shone with the wealth of oil, a dynasty collapsed overnight. One aged cleric, Khomeini, returned from exile; the oil fields fell silent; crude prices leapt once more. A secular modern state transformed into a religious one, and U.S.–Iran relations were severed. The full picture of the Second Oil Shock.
08 Two Wars — The Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War The aftershocks of revolution sent two great neighbors crashing into each other atop their oil fields. Eight years of bloody stalemate in the Iran–Iraq War; the Tanker War that left the Strait of Hormuz on edge. Then a debt-ridden Saddam pours into Kuwait — the Gulf War, and oil fires that turned the sky black.
09 The Iraq War — Between a Cause and Oil In 2003, the United States and Britain invaded Iraq under the banner of "weapons of mass destruction." The Saddam regime fell in three weeks — but what awaited afterward was weapons never found, sectarian conflict, and a quagmire with no end in sight. Between a cause and the spoils of oil, the question still will not fade.
10 Shale, US-China, Decarbonization — What Became of the Black Gold The shale revolution turned America into one of the world's largest oil producers, and its old obsession with the Middle East began to loosen. The biggest buyer now is China — which, in 2023, brokered a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. A century-long story continues inside the headlines we read today. The finale.