Oil exploration does not mean immediate wealth…

Oil exploration does not mean immediate wealth for Arab rulers of the Gulf region.

Although the oil companies strike large deposits of oil in Bahrain almost immediately, it takes longer in other countries to locate finds of commercial size.

Oman, for instance, will be unable to export oil until 1967.

The Second World War delays development of whatever fields had been discovered in the 1930s; so it is not until the 1950s that countries still technically dependent on Britain for their security begin to earn large incomes.

The oil fields in Kuwait are developed the most quickly, and by 1953 that nation becomes the largest oil producer in the gulf.

Considerably smaller fields in Qatar come onstream in commercial quantities in the 1950s, and Abu Dhabi begin to export offshore oil in 1962.

Dubayy begins to profit from offshore oil deposits in the late 1960s.