ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to weigh the region's variety and achieve a more balanced perspective. Asphalt, gas, and oil seeps from underground hydrocarbon deposits have been known for millennia at numerous sites in the Middle East—in northern Mesopotamia, near Hit on the Euphrates, on both sides of the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, under the Dead Sea, at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez, and in a dozen other places. The modest but historically important Bahrain field, found in 1932, was the first discovered in the Gulf area proper, outside Iran and Iraq. It was also the scene of the region's first all-US oil venture. Growing realization of the oil potential accelerated exploration in the lower Gulf, and after World War II more than a score of new enterprises were exploring on land and offshore.
