Introduction

This chapter focuses on the critical years before and after the exploitation of oil began in Saudi Arabia. The refinery, pipelines, gas-oil separator plants and other oil-producing facilities of the Eastern province of al-Hasa, to be supplemented by an enormous associated gas-gathering network, are the life force of Saudi Arabian development. Yet it was across the peninsula in the Hejaz that the initial phase of Saudi development was carried out. The Hejaz experience shaped the attitudes and perspectives of the House of Saud, and was no less a determinant of the course of development than were austere religious belief and practice, or the physical environment of Nejd, the heart of Arabia and the Saudi homeland. There is irony in the fact that the oil which fuels the engine of Saudi Arabian development was discovered not far from the oasis of Qatif, forsaken by ancestors of the Kingdom's ruling dynasty for Dariyah, in the Arabian interior more than four centuries ago.