34THE OIL AGE ARRIVESSo when on October 16, 1938, Caltex brought news of the Dammam
find to Ibn Saud, the Saudi king knew that the promised golden age had
arrived. After centuries of slumber, Saudi Arabia was in business. The
camp at Dammam expanded with family cottages and shops. Wives
came from America. The camp took on a new name: Dhahran.^12
It took little more than a year before the first export cargo was ready
to sail. On May 1, 1939, the initial 80,000 barrels of virgin Saudi crude
were pumped aboard the tanker D. G. Schofield. During the loading, Ibn
Saud and his court hosted a three- day celebration on the dock at Ras
Tanura, with thousands in attendance. The Dammam field would even-
tually produce 32 million barrels.^13
The crude oil that flowed so profusely from Dammam No. 7 would
be found again and again under the barren east Arabian landscape, in
reservoirs of unprecedented size. All those in Saudi Arabia would be
overseen from the Dhahran camp, which, it turned out, sat at the center
of the richest prospecting ground in the world. Drillers also struck crude
in surrounding sheikhdoms. Oil was found in Kuwait in 1938, Qatar in
1939, Abu Dhabi in 1958, and Oman in 1962.
For most observers, oil was an unalloyed blessing. At last, one of the
world’s most deprived regions would have resources for development.
And indeed, changes began to penetrate all aspects of the Gulf, from
the built environment, to the size and makeup of society, to public
health and education, to cultural habits— even the language. Still,
some sensed that dark days were ahead. Echoing Munif, Thesiger felt
that the desert Arabs were better off without oil, since the “evil that
comes with sudden change far outweighs the good.”^14 “All that is best
in the Arabs has come to them from the desert. Their deep religious
instinct... their pride of race, their generosity and sense of hospi-
tality, their dignity... their humor, their courage and patience,” he
wrote. Thesiger preached that “the Arabs are a race which produces its
best only under conditions of extreme hardship and deteriorates pro-
gressively as living conditions become easier.” But despite such mis-
givings, the low- cost Arabian producers— advantageously governed,
uniquely endowed, and favorably positioned— would soon dominate
the oil business.