Saudi Arabian Oil History Aramco’s Corporate Account of Petroleum and National Development 1980

Aramco

First Edition

Arabian American Oil Company. Aramco and Its World: Arabia and the Middle East, published in 1980, documents the corporate information system through which Aramco explained Saudi history, Islamic culture, regional geography, petroleum engineering, and industrial development to employees and a wider English-language audience. Replacing the longstanding Aramco Handbook title, the volume grew from instructional booklets created during the company’s postwar expansion to orient incoming American personnel unfamiliar with Arabic and Saudi social practices. Its coordinated use of historical narrative, landscape photography, technical diagrams, and cultural guidance reveals how Aramco presented itself as both a petroleum enterprise and an intermediary between Saudi Arabia and the industrialized West, providing primary-source evidence for research into corporate communications, expatriate training, petroleum infrastructure, and United States–Saudi relations. Publication coincided with the Saudi government’s acquisition of a 100 percent participation interest in Aramco’s concession rights, production, and facilities, although the Saudi Arabian Oil Company was not formally created to assume Aramco’s responsibilities until 1988.

Arabian American Oil Company. Aramco and Its World: Arabia and the Middle East. Washington, D.C.: Arabian American Oil Company, 1980. First edition in this revised and retitled form. xi, 275 pages. Profusely illustrated with color photographs, maps, and diagrams, including double-page and folding material. Publisher’s blue cloth lettered in turquoise; no dust jacket. Large 4to. A large folding color map titled “The Arabian Peninsula,” drawn by Don Thompson and measuring approximately 24 × 36 inches, is inserted at the rear. The book traces the growth of the modern Saudi state, the geography of the peninsula, and the development of Aramco’s petroleum system. Illustrated cultural sections show desert dwellings, coffee preparation, camel travel, goat herding, Islamic calligraphy, and landscapes including Jabal al-Fil, while technical chapters record seismic surveying in the Rubʿ al Khali, drilling equipment, instrument-filled control rooms, offshore platforms, tanker-loading facilities, and the geometrically arranged storage and refining installations at Ras Tanura. Maps locate Middle Eastern oil fields and Aramco concession areas, and charts using 1978 data compare global petroleum production, reserves, and consumption. The folding map extends the volume’s educational purpose beyond the bound text, presenting topography, cities, transportation routes, and political boundaries on a scale suited to reference or display. A manuscript inscription on the front free endpaper reads, “Dear Dick and Susie…I’m on page 117,” preserving evidence of the book’s circulation as a personal or professional presentation copy.

The volume’s detailed visual record is governed by Aramco’s institutional viewpoint. Its photographs and diagrams demonstrate the process by which geological surveying, extraction, refining, transportation, and export operated as an integrated industrial network, while its treatment of Bedouin life and Saudi culture translates complex communities into introductory material for predominantly foreign readers. The timing gives this edition particular interpretive value: its language continues the company’s established narrative of technological leadership and cultural mediation even as ownership of the petroleum enterprise passed fully to the Saudi government. Official Aramco histories confirm that Saudi participation reached 100 percent in 1980, making the book evidence of both the mature American corporate communication apparatus and the transition toward Saudi control. Light sunning and small marks affect the blue cloth; the folding map is clean and well preserved, and the contents remain sound. Very good. A substantial illustrated record of the technical and cultural knowledge Aramco used to explain its operations during a pivotal year in the transfer of Saudi petroleum ownership.

Item #22552

Price: $220.00