Oil and Geography

First of all, to clear up confusion regarding the topographical map linked to the blog, green does not indicate that a land is more fertile at all; it simply means that it's at a lower altitude than the brown areas. Also, Dana was correct in saying that oil doesn't have to do with fertility of soil (I think, but I'm not sure, that it comes from remains of plants and animals from millions of years ago - the soil simply had to sustain life a long time ago).

One interesting thing that I found in the maps was that there is a large amount of oil sitting under the Persian Gulf. Who "owns" this oil? Have any attempts to extract it been made yet? Are there any conflicts regarding it? Who discovered its existence in the first place?

Another interesting thing I noticed on the map is the large oil reserve in northern Iraq. This oil reserve, though, happens to be smack in the middle of the Kurdish part of Iraq. It would be interesting to find out more about the exploitation of that oil, and if the Kurdish inhabitants of the region benefited at all from its discovery.

Finally, one last point regarding the oil fields in the Middle East was that I noticed that all the countries that were for the pan-Islamic union in the textbook (Syria, Yemen, Egypt, etc.) don't have any oil at all. I wonder if their motives for such a union could have been driven by desires for something other than Islamic unity? In contrast, none of the oil-gifted countries wanted a union, not even amongst themselves. All they formed was OPEC, an economic treaty. This, then, clearly shows that the oil countries, at least, are motivated more by money than by religion.