OIL AND SUDDEN WEALTH

[Music] The people here call it the Gulf or the Arabian Gulf. Westerners have called it. On the north and east, Iran and Iraq, and on the south and west, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, the land the Arabs came out of more than 1300 years ago, bringing with them a powerful new religion, and its name was Islam. Islam changed the history of the Middle East and the world. Today, the people of this Gulf region are again shaping history with another powerful force, and its name is oil. [Applause] [Music] Much of the world's known supply of oil lies under the lands and waters of the Gulf. Some of the Gulf countries like Iran and Iraq had centuries of urban development. But on the Arabian Peninsula, the people for the most part lived in small coastal villages on the edge of the vast desert that makes up nearly all the land. The people made their living mainly from the sea, pearl diving and fishing. Over [Music] the deserts of the region, the nomads wandered. The Bedawins [Music] [Music] Into this slow paced Middle Eastern setting came oil changing the landscape and the lives of the people. The overwhelming majority of the people here are Muslims. Here in Saudi Arabia, for instance, 99% of them are. In all the Gulf countries except for Iran, the native population is Arab. There were only a few cities on the Arabian Peninsula when oil was discovered. But the wealth from oil and the oil industry itself have caused many changes in these cities. For one thing, one of the most common sites in the cities now is construction. New buildings are needed to house the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the oil industries and in the businesses and industries oil has stimulated. [Music] Not only have new buildings gone up in and near existing cities, but whole new cities have been built. Instant cities where only fishing villages stood before. To get from the cities to the oil fields to bring in equipment and workers, there had to be roads. New roads through the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula are another part of the change that has come to the landscape because of oil. This highway is being built near Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. [Applause] [Music] elaborate pipelines were built to carry the oil away from the wells. Oil was first discovered in Iran and Iraq in the 1930s, a few years later in Saudi Arabia, and then in the 1950s in other countries on the Arabian Peninsula. And it's been gushing out of the ground ever since. [Music] up. [Music] [Music] That's Getting vast amounts of oil out of the Gulf region was a problem that couldn't be solved without making a big change in shipping facilities. The existing ports couldn't service the large number of tankers that would be needed to carry oil to the oil hungry industrialized nations of the world. So, new ports were constructed and old ones enlarged. [Laughter] These are new port facilities in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The oil income pays for the roads and the ports, the housing projects and the new cities. Since the Gulf countries, especially those on the Arabian Peninsula, are underpop populated, the oil money also draws needed people with needed skills. These men are Pakistanis who have come to work in Dubai. All over the region, foreign workers have been drawn by the need for technicians and laborers, skilled and unskilled workers to work in the oil fields and the cities. Pakistan, Yugoslavians, and Kuwait. Yugoslavians and Pakistanis, Indians, Koreans, Iranians, Americans. So many foreigners have come to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, that only a fourth of their population is nativeorn. Outside a post office, foreign workers line up to send their earnings home. [Applause] [Music] Oil is the Gulf region's main resource and practically the only one on the Arabian Peninsula. That region is so limited in other resources that not only do the workers have to be imported, but almost everything else does. While the tankers take out the oil, other ships bring in machinery, equipment, lumber and steel and cement. The product industrialized world, [Music] food and clothing have to be imported too. and not only the basic necessities but also the luxuries. Merchants have grown wealthy importing goods the people want and can now afford. [Music] Oil and the business it has stimulated have earned billions of dollars for Gulf people and their governments. But the oil won't last forever. Based on current use and known reserves, the oil might last for only about another 50 years, maybe a 100. That isn't a long time for a country trying to plan for the future. Until the 1960s, the oil was mainly controlled by Western companies, but then OPEC was formed, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Since then, the Gulf countries and the other members of the organization determine oil prices themselves, and their governments get a far greater share of the profits. Now that they are in control of their main resource, they have to deal with the rapid changes that the resulting sudden wealth has brought. Some of the countries have become so wealthy so fast it has been difficult for them to decide how to spend their money. A lot of it goes for public services. These ceremonies were in honor of the project that helped clean up the beaches of Kuwait City. Public services get an important share of the money all over the region and so does medical care. New hospitals in the cities and small towns and mobile units in rural areas offer free or lowcost medical services. [Music] The Gulf countries have the funds to build impressive medical facilities, but they don't have the wide range of trained personnel that are needed for full and adequate medical services. [Music] A modern school in Saudi Arabia, another sign of the way Gulf countries have chosen to spend their new wealth. Until recently, only Iran and Iraq had universities. Now, students like these Saudis can get an advanced education in their own country. Hundreds of new elementary schools have also been built. More girls are being educated now. [Music] No, for Iranians and other students of the region, a knowledge of English is very useful for those who plan to go on for advanced education. I have eaten my lunch. I had my lunch at 12:00. Are you going to read write write an invitation to Mr. Green? I have written a letter to him already. I wrote it yesterday morning. Is he going to give you the money? I think he has for forgotten to bring it. Although there are more schools now, most advanced university education is available only in foreign lands. But oil wealth will make it possible for many of these students to be sent to foreign universities. Thousands have already gone. From these students will come scientists, engineers, educators, and technicians. People who will have the skills that the region now needs for development. The Gulf countries are also using their new wealth to settle their nomad population, the Bedawins, who make up almost a fifth of the population. Social workers help them adjust to living in permanent homes that the governments have built for them. These veterans live in Kuwait. [Music] The government's hope to make a settled life more attractive for them. [Music] Oil money is also making it possible for the governments to make better use of their land resources. Abu Dhabi has water for irrigation now because of the millions it has spent to develop large desalination projects, converting seawater to fresh water. And because the sand here is fertile, water means that agriculture can become possible in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. The desert is being reclaimed. A first step toward the development of self-sufficiency in food. In Iran, not only the wealth from oil, but the oil itself is being used to improve the land. Only about a third of Iran can be cultivated. The rest is made up of mountains and deserts. Oil sprayed on the sand holds the surface of the desert sand dunes in place and prevents them from being moved by the wind onto farmland. [Music] Once the shifting dunes are held in place temporarily, plants begin growing that can stabilize the dunes permanently. Iran is more fortunate than the countries on the Arabian Peninsula because it has water resources. Its mountain streams can be damned and used for irrigation. Oil money can pay for large-scale irrigation projects like this one. [Applause] Even though most of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula have hardly any freshwater resources, they can afford very expensive desalination projects that make water from the Gulf usable for irrigation and available in large quantities. Oil money has given Saudi Arabia the means for looking into a very unusual source of fresh water, the polar ice cap. The Saudis spent millions to investigate the possibility of towing immense ice flows for a permanent supply of fresh water. Saudi Arabian money helped Egypt rebuild its war destroyed areas along the Suez Canal and bolstered its economy. Oil has given the Gulf countries power in the Arab world as well as among the industrial nations of the world. But now more and more oil money is aimed at the future. When income from oil diminishes, banks are helping governments put much of that money to work in foreign investments. Some of the countries are developing their own industries. Instead of shipping the crude petroleum to foreign refineries, they're establishing more refineries in their own countries. [Music] [Applause] [Music] They are building up their own industry to avoid having to be so dependent on the production of a foreign nations. [Music] With oil money, not only can new industries develop, but old ones can expand, like the production of caviar from sturgeon caught in the Caspian Sea. Iran is one of the world's leading producers of that delicacy. [Music] Oil has provided instant wealth, instant power instant problems. Oil has focused the energies of the Gulf countries on producing and consuming goods and it is rapidly changing the lives of the people. The people see a new world being built all around them. New lifestyles that had never been part of their world before. [Music] They see their cities taking on a new look. The pace of their life is changing, speeding up, westernizing, modernizing. People find themselves thrust into an unfamiliar world. [Music] For centuries, Gulf peoples have lived by the values of a culture that was developed by nomads and village farmers, crafts people, and traders. For centuries, Islam and its laws acted as a stabilizing force for the people. Now oil is moving these Gulf peoples into a technological society with new values, new pressures, new problems. And their main problem is how to keep their old world stable while they blend the forces of this new world into their lives. [Music] [Music]