QALAJI, Mahmoud.

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Al-Tharwah al-bitrūliya fī al-khalīj al-'arabī. First edition, inscribed by the author in Arabic to the management of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia in Beirut, of this well-illustrated work entirely devoted to oil wealth and the oil industry in GCC countries, where oil reserves at the time were "sufficient unto the whole world for 36 years".An initial historical overview on oil exploitation and production is followed by chapters discussing oil wealth in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah. The first section on Kuwait, with several photos of the al-Sabah, examines expenditure of profits derived from oil wealth, with a focus on specific major projects, such as the Shuwaykh port and the Al Sabah hospital, as well as the establishment of the Arab economic development fund. It also praises Kuwait's constitution, approved two years earlier.With images of the Al Khalifa rulers and oil infrastructure, the second part discusses oil production in Bahrain, especially concessions and BAPCO's activities since the discovery of oil in the 1930s. The third part, on Qatar, praises the policies of the al-Thani rulers, and has a section on a new oil vessel being operated there by Shell. The last part includes detailed technical descriptions of the early phases of oil exploitation in Abu Dhabi, which had only started in 1962; it concludes with a reference to the Abu Dhabi government's recent five-year development plan.

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