Opec's loss may be India’s gain: How the UAE's exit from the cartel could ease our oil import bills

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Crude oil, the undistilled kind right out of the ground, was known to the Mesopotamians, Persians and Babylonians. The Chinese were the first to dig shallow wells and transport flammable oil through bamboo pipelines. Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner was the pioneer who began to distil oil and coined the term ‘kerosene’ in the mid-1850s.

John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, founded in 1870, integrated production, transport, refining and marketing of crude oil and its distillates until its anti-trust related breakup in 1911. Meanwhile, the action was heating up in West Asia; Masjed-e-Soleyman in Iran emerged as the first oil well in the country, discovered in 1908.

While mature, it is still an active well, located not too far from the city of Isfahan. Massive logistics operations during the two World Wars necessitated a bulk shift in fuel from coal to diesel and petrol, adding further impetus to the rapid acceptance of energy sourced from crude oil. For the first four decades of the 20th century, oil production was dominated by the US, with Russia a minor player.

The action then shifted almost completely to West Asia for about three decades after World War II. Thereafter, there has been a balance between production by the US, Russia and West Asia. After World War II, a wave of nationalization took place.

Many countries in West Asia took back ownership of the production of crude oil from Western owners of oil facilities. British Petroleum (BP), Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco and Gulf Oil, ‘the seven sisters’ as they were known, ceded ownership to national oil companies like Aramco, National Iranian Oil and Iraq National Oil. Later, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC)