- THE OIL AGE ARRIVES177
59, National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD (NARA).
Provided by Nathan Citino of Rice University.
- Jones, Desert Kingdom, 97– 101; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on
the Saudi Oil Frontier (London: Verso, 2007).
- Figures from OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2007, cited in Islam Y. Qasem, Oil and
Security Policies: Saudi Arabia, 1950– 2012 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 46.
- Rachel Bronson, Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 65.
- Vitalis, America’s Kingdom, 27.
- Thomas W. Lippman, Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of Amer-
ican Power in the Middle East (Vista, CA: Selwa, 2008).
- Aramco’s 340- mile railway and its stations are still in use. For its history, see
John C. Henry, “American Railroad on the Arabian Desert,” Popular Mechanics,
April 1952.
- Osmel Manzano and Francisco Monaldi, “The Political Economy of Oil Contract
Renegotiation in Venezuela,” in The Natural Resources Trap: Private Investment With-
out Public Commitment, ed. William Hogan and Federico Sturzenegger (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2010).
- Multiplying current proven reserve figures of 267 billion barrels by a low valuation
of $5/barrel implies potential revenues of $1.3 trillion. It would be unlikely that
100 percent of reserves could be produced. Typical recovery rates are in the 30 to
40 percent range. Reserves figures from BP, Statistical Review of World Energy
2015 (London: BP, 2015). In 2016, Saudi Aramco’s valuation was variously estimated
at between $780bn and $10 trillion. See Robin Mills, “Aramco IPO Talk Has Mes-
sage for Saudi State Firms,” The National (Abu Dhabi), January 10, 2016, http: //www
. t h e n a t i o n a l. a e / b u s i n e s s / e n e r g y / a r a m c o - i p o - t a l k - h a s - m e s s a g e - f o r - s a u d i - s t a t e
- Using the formula in note 28, Kuwaiti reserves would be worth something like $500
billion. Concession terms from Yergin, The Prize, 297– 98.
- Steven Jay Epstein, “The Cartel That Never Was,” Atlantic, March 1983, https: //www
. t h e a t l a n t i c. c o m / m a g a z i n e / a r c h i v e / 1 9 8 3 / 0 3 / t h e - c a r t e l - t h a t - n e v e r - w a s / 3 0 6 4 9 5 /.
- Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (Brooklyn:
Verso, 2013).
- Edith Penrose, George Joffe, and Paul Stevens, “Nationalisation of Foreign- Owned
Property for a Public Purpose: An Economic Perspective on Appropriate Compen-
sation,” Modern Law Review 55, no. 3 (1992): 351– 67.
- Manzano and Monaldi, “The Political Economy of Oil Contract Renegotiation in
Ve n e z u e l a .”
- Yergin, The Prize, 434– 35, 447.
- Yergin, The Prize, 447– 48.
- Arthur Ross, “OPEC’s Challenge to the West,” Washington Quarterly 3, no. 1 (1980):
50– 57.
