Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Socal discovered oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and a year later was exporting
it. It is a measure of the US government's increasing oil angst that in 1943
a plan was discussed in Washington to create a state-owned company,
dubbed the Petroleum Reserves Corporation, to buy part of Socal's oil and
set it aside for military use.
This never came to anything. But the growing relationship between
the US and Saudi Arabia was cemented at the highest political level in
1945, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew to Egypt and met
King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud on a US destroyer in the southern mouth of
the Suez canal. This was the basis of America's ongoing oil-for-security
relationship with Saudi Arabia.
To carry out its security side of the bargain, the US were given the right
to set up a base at Dahran. The oil relationship was also widened to bring
in more US companies. Socal, which brought in Texaco in 1936, changed
the name of its Saudi subsidiary from the Californian-Arabian Standard
Oil Company to the Arabian-American Oil Company - and in 1948
brought in Exxon and Mobil as part-owners. This was also the year in
which Aramco discovered Ghawar, the world's biggest oil field.
US presidential doctrines and the Gulf
Successive US presidents' foreign policy statements - which are termed
“doctrines”, as if they were papal pronouncements - tightened the links
between America and the Gulf: between energy and national security.
The Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine of 1947 promised US military help to all countries
perceived to be threatened by Communism. It was targeted mainly at
Greece, Turkey and Iran, which were thought most at risk from Soviet
expansionism. But Saudi Arabia, which was feared to be a target of Soviet
subversion, also received US military aid and training in 1951's Mutual
Defence Assistance agreement between the two countries.
The Eisenhower Doctrine
The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 went further, promising that
Washington would send combat troops, if necessary, to defend impor-
tant allies of the US. The only place in the Middle East where President
Eisenhower dispatched US troops was to Lebanon, in 1958. But he also
sent more US military aid (though not any troops), to Saudi Arabia.
