ABSTRACT
With its enormous hydrocarbon wealth, the Middle East is without equal and perforce has a unique global role. Western cognizance of the vital importance of Middle East oil was manifest in 1990 when US and European forces responded immediately to the imperilment of Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields. As of 2012, 806.9 bn bbl of oil—about 49.3 percent of the world's proved reserves—lay under the Middle East, most of it around and under the Gulf and to the northwest along the Tigris and Euphrates. Eastern Saudi Arabia has about a third of the region's reserves, distributed over fifty fields, onshore and offshore, extending from Kuwait south to the Abu Dhabi border. Prominent is the large, linear Ghawar field, the world's greatest single oil reservoir. Syria's older fields lie in the extreme northeastern corner of the country, just west of the Tigris River, and are an integral part of the structures containing the Batman fields of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.
