Gobar Times Magazine (Environment for Kids Monthly) - Centre for Science and Environment

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Oil discovered in Iran
> 1908

Oil discovered in Iraq
>1927

Huge oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. Overproduction depresses oil prices
> 1924

Britain gains control over Iran's oil fields and US discovers oil reserves in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. After the war ended, middle eastern oil production surged
> 1930s

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> By 1919
Britain controls 50 per cent of world's proven oil reserve. Bitter struggle for control

> 1920
USA adopts Mineral Leasing Act. No access to US oil to any country that denies the US access to its reserves. US finally let to drill in British Middle East and Dutch East Indies

> 1940s
World War II. Hitler sends his army to take control over the oil and gas rich Caucuses or Caspian sea region

> 1950s
US consumes one-third of global oil. Foreign oil very cheap


George Bush Sr sets up the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company > 1951	US depends on Middle East for a third of its oil. Oil producers able to raise world oil prices > Early 1970s	Oil embargo. World oil prices quadrupled > 1973-74	Ayatollah Khomeini, in a popular uprising, overthrows Shah of Iran > Nov 1979

> 1953 Mossadeq comes to power in Iran. Announces intent to nationalise oil. CIA and British intelligence force him to resign. Shah of Iran comes to throne. 40 per cent of oil comes to US	> 1960 Iran, Venezuela, and Arabia form OPEC, Organization of Petroleum Producing States, to negotiate higher oil prices	> 1977 Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, invests big in Bush Jr’s start-up oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc.	> 1979 "The largest covert operation of the CIA" in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Saudi-born Osama bin Laden recruited