Cold Open

It’s early morning on September 23rd, 1933, in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

American geologist Robert Miller braces his hands on the side of a motorboat as it slows on the approach to the Jubail port. Robert is always more comfortable on land than sea, and he grips the rail a little tighter as the boat bumps against the dock.

As crewmen attach the mooring lines, Robert pulls a linen rag from his back pocket and wipes the sheen of sweat from his forehead.

Robert’s colleague, fellow geologist Schuyler “Krug” Henry joins him, and they make their way down the gangplank to a rickety wooden dock.

The two men work for the Standard Oil Company of California, otherwise known as SoCal. They have crossed the globe on a hunt for oil, but they want to be as inconspicuous as possible. To soften how strange their pale faces look here, both men have grown full beards, and instead of their usual battered field hats, they wear flowing Arab headscarves.

As Robert walks along the sweltering dock, he spots the man he’s come to see. American mining engineer Karl S. Twitchell surveyed the deserts beyond Jubail for the Saudi king, and he was the first to identify that there may be oil here.

That’s what’s drawn SoCal’s interest and convinced them to buy exploration rights in the region. Now it’s up to Robert to establish whether Karl was right.

The two men shake hands and exchange greetings.

Behind Karl, a small group of local officials and hired guides wait beside a convoy of trucks and camels. This is Robert and Krug’s ride. Somewhere in the expanse of desert beyond Jubail, a fortune may lie hidden beneath the sands. They just have to find it.

Robert Miller’s assignment in Jubail will change both Saudi Arabia and the world. The discovery of oil in the country will turn what was once a poor desert kingdom into a powerful petro-state. But before that transformation can take place, Robert and his team will endure years of frustration, hardship, and doubt, which began almost as soon as they arrived in Saudi Arabia on September 23rd, 1933.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is September 23rd, 1933: The Search for Saudi Oil Begins.

Act One: A Bad Start

It is late September 1933, in the dunes beyond Jubail, Saudi Arabia, five days after American geologists arrived in the country from California.

Schuyler “Krug” Henry sits in the passenger seat of an open-top car. The morning sun is already fierce, and the heat builds with every mile.

He takes a long drink of water from a canteen, then leans forward, arms crossed on the dashboard, and stares at the endless sand ahead. By now, Krug is used to the sound of engines struggling in the heat. But it sounds like the noise is getting worse. With an almost animal groan, the car suddenly strains, whines, and then stalls.

Krug glances at his SoCal colleague, Robert Miller. Without a word, both men climb down from their seats. There are camels in their convoy, brought along as insurance against this very thing. Krug gives Robert a wry look. Riding camels was not in their training. But the desert makes its own rules, and in this harsh emptiness, they have no choice but to saddle up.

Now five days into their desert mapping mission, Krug and Robert have already covered many miles. Today, their hunt for oil brings them to the Dammam Dome, a huge oval-shaped mound in the desert spanning 60 square miles, roughly the size of Washington, D.C. SoCal has high hopes for the Dome. Just over a year ago, a similar formation in neighboring Bahrain yielded plentiful oil.

That success is the reason SoCal has taken the risk of investing in Saudi Arabia. The company has secured a sweeping 60-year concession with the Saudi government. In exchange for advance payments and annual rent, SoCal has exploration rights over a vast stretch of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. It’s a bold deal, though, and its success now depends on Krug and Robert.

Once the two men reach the foot of the Dome, they dismount from their camels. Getting straight to work, Krug and Robert start conducting surface investigations of the rock formations, looking for clues as to what might lie beneath. Examining carefully, Krug notices what look like anticlines, arched folds in the rock that can trap oil. Seeing this makes him and Robert optimistic, but cautiously so—surface signs like these are no guarantee that there is oil beneath. Only drilling will tell for sure. So, they carefully mark the location on the map before moving on.

Such moments are exciting, but over the weeks that follow, they prove far and few between. Life in the field is grueling, and every day seems to bring new challenges. The daytime heat presses down like a vise, but the nights turn dangerously cold. The maps they have are hopelessly unreliable. And supplies from California that they’ve been promised only arrive sporadically. Progress is frustratingly slow.

It's not until many months later, in the summer of 1934, that drilling crews and heavy rigs finally arrive from the United States. With them is a new face—Max Steineke, a wiry 35-year-old geologist who’s previously worked for SoCal in New Zealand, Colombia, and Alaska.

With his arrival, Max introduces new techniques to the search, like structural drilling to map the hidden folds and layers of limestone rock beneath their feet. This helps find the best places to search. And when the first well is dug, for a moment, hopes rise when oil emerges. But the flow is meager, and the pressure drops away quickly. Wells 2 through 6 follow the same pattern—small shows of oil or gas, but nothing close to what's needed for commercial production.

Each failure darkens the mood among the geologists. And by the summer of 1936, the original team led by Krug Henry and Robert Miller is worn out and makes the long journey back to the States. Max Steineke is promoted to chief geologist. Which is a mixed blessing—it means that after six disappointing wells, the burden of making SoCal’s investment payoff is now his entirely.

And while Max struggles in the desert heat, thousands of miles away in the comfortable offices of the Standard Oil Company of California, executives debate whether the time has come to cut their losses. The Saudi Arabian venture has already swallowed too many dollars with too little to show for it. All the reports from the Middle East speak only of endless heat, broken rigs, and empty holes in the ground. So, to increasing numbers of the SoCal executives, the investment in Saudi Arabia will start to resemble a lost cause. And they will ask how much longer they can afford to keep throwing good money after bad.

Act Two: Drilling Deeper

It’s September 1936, in the Saudi Arabian desert, three years after the search for oil in the country began.

Under the hot stale canvas of his field tent, Max Steineke studies a creased and weathered map. He’s searching for a fresh prospect. But time and time again, he returns to the same formation Robert Miller and Krug Henry marked three years earlier: the Dammam Dome. He traces the contour lines of the oval shape with his finger. Despite the failure to find any meaningful oil reserves there so far, Max still thinks that the Dome is the best shot they have. He believes the problem is they just haven’t dug deep enough. So he decides on a bold new plan. They will dig a “deep test” well that will push thousands of feet further into the limestone.

But when word of Max’s idea reaches California, the Standard Oil executives balk. Another, deeper well means even more money spent, with no guarantee of return.

But for Max, walking away now would mean wasting years of work. He faces a choice. He can accept defeat and wind down operations. Or he can fight for his hunch.

So, with the future of the entire venture at stake, Max boards a plane to California. There, in the SoCal boardroom, he convinces the executives to try one more time. But this will be the last roll of the dice. And as he heads back to Saudi Arabia, Max knows that it’s now or never.

Max returns to the field, and in September 1937, the deep test begins: Well Number 7.On the first day, he paces the packed earth beside the rig, the rhythmic clank of the machinery echoing off the bare rock of the Dome. His boots are caked in a thick layer of dust. And all around him, the rig crew toils in the heat, their shirts clinging to their backs and dark with sweat.

Max can't help feeling nervous. This is the deep well, and the further the drills go, the more likely the pipes will twist, jam, or break. But to Max, the choice is simple: they drill deep or they leave empty-handed.

So through the fall, Well Number 7 progresses in fits and starts. The crew battles mechanical failures that take weeks to repair. On more than one occasion, the drills must be pulled out and replaced. And each expensive setback brings sharp telegrams from California.

But by December, the well has reached deeper than any previous attempt. Still, there is no sign of the reliable oil flow Max is chasing. He overhears his workers talking in hushed tones, wondering when they can throw in the towel and go home.

Still, despite his team’s growing doubts, Max orders them to keep drilling. He pushes past 4,000 feet, then four-and-a-half thousand feet. But still there’s nothing.

Then, finally, on March 3rd, 1938, the drills cut into porous limestone. At a depth of roughly 4,700 feet, the pressure changes instantly. Moments later, crude oil surges up from the casing and spills high into the air.

The men on the rig cheer, flinging their hats into the air and shaking each other’s hands. Max walks to the edge of the gusher. Oil glistens on the rig floor, making it slick underfoot. The initial flow is measured at over 1,500 barrels a day. And in under a week, production climbs to more than 3,000 barrels. Well Number 7 is quickly renamed “Prosperity Well.”

Of course, news of the discovery races from the Dome to SoCal’s headquarters in California. Max’s gamble has paid off in spectacular fashion. Now, there’s no mention of the company abandoning its investment, and in the weeks that follow, the camp at the Dammam Dome is transformed. Storage tanks rise from the sand. Supply lines hum with activity. But as far as Max Steineke is concerned, the Prosperity Well is only the beginning. The reservoir feeding the well may stretch for miles beneath the sands. And he suspects it’s not the only one.

So, Max presses on. He orders seismic and structural surveys, scouting for similar reserves beneath the surface. The work is punishing and costly, but now every new test seems to promise more and more oil.

It will soon become clear that Saudi Arabia’s oil fields can rival anything in Texas or Persia and must be worth billions of dollars. And that newfound wealth will do far more than just boost the profits of the Standard Oil Company of California. The discovery of vast oil reserves in Saudi Arabia will reshape the country. And in time, they will change the world.

Act Three: A New Saudi Arabia

It’s February 1939, in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, almost a year after the Prosperity Well hit oil.

Abdullah Suleiman sits at a broad desk in his office, carefully reviewing columns of figures. As Saudi Arabia’s Finance Minister, he has long managed a national budget that is almost entirely dependent on the pilgrimage season. The fees and taxes from Muslims making their journey to the holy site at Mecca keep the treasury afloat. But that income rises and falls unpredictably. Some years, the revenue is strong. But in others, it barely covers the kingdom’s needs.

Now, though, there is a new figure in Suleiman’s budget: oil royalties. Tens of thousands of dollars in steady installments from the American oil company SoCal. Six years ago, Suleiman was the principal Saudi signatory to the oil concession agreement. And at the time, it was a deal that seemed to promise only a small income for Saudi Arabia. But now that gamble has changed the fate of an entire nation.

He writes the large figure at the bottom of the sheet, watching the ink glisten before soaking into the paper. This new income means stability and a new Saudi Arabia—one no longer reliant on the uncertainty of pilgrim numbers, but on the more reliable oil industry.

And as more and more oil fields are discovered, production ramps up rapidly. By 1943, ten years after the search for oil in Saudi Arabia began, Standard Oil of California is so dependent on its Saudi investments that it's renamed the Arabian-American Oil Company, or Aramco for short.

And five years later, in 1948, the company makes its biggest discovery yet. The Ghawar oil field proves to be the largest in the world. The enormous wealth it creates transforms Saudi Arabia. And soon, modern roads crisscross the ancient desert, and new ports and cities rise from the sands. The pace of change is rapid and unrelenting. But the oil doesn’t just change the country physically; it also gives Saudi Arabia’s autocratic rulers unprecedented influence on the world stage.

Thanks to its enormous fossil fuel reserves, Saudi Arabia secures alliances with the most powerful nations on the planet. And when it becomes a founding member of The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, in 1960, Saudi Arabia takes on a leading role in setting the global price of oil.So with its wealth and influence growing, in the early 1970s, the Saudi government buys its first stake in Aramco. By 1980, it has taken full control of the company, which is then renamed Saudi Aramco. The following year, revenue reaches $118 billion—and only continues to grow from there.

Today, Saudi Arabia is almost unrecognizable from what it was. A poor desert kingdom, baking under the Middle Eastern sun, is now one of the richest countries on Earth with vast influence over the global economy. And that extraordinary transformation all began when two geologists stepped off a boat in Jubail on September 23rd, 1933.

Outro

Next on History Daily. September 24th, 1988. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson wins gold at the Seoul Olympics, only to be stripped of the medal after testing positive for steroids.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Olivia Jordan.

Edited by Joel Callen.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.