Examines the importance of oil, how it is formed and obtained, the dependence of industrialized nations on oil, and why it has become a bargaining chip between Middle Eastern and Western nations.

First Published in 2002. Oil is of strategic significance. The bulk of the earth's known oil reserves, more than 70 percent, is concentrated in the Persian Gulf area. And although alternative energy sources have been vigorously pursued, the United States continues, since 1970, to import from the Persian Gulf 24 percent of needed oil for her own consumption. Since this study was completed thirty years ago there have been several major events related to the control of the flow of Gulf oil. This work narrates the history of the world's power struggle over the control of oil in the Persian Gulf from the time of the signing of the earliest oil concessions in 1901 until 1971.

An analysis of both the world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil and of the very dangerous way politics and economics play themselves out in the oil game.