Page 143 - Adobe Photoshop PDF

The weather was warm in Kirkuk, but not nearly as hot as Arabia
at the same time. The nights were cool and pleasant. We were invited
to the outdoor movie theater one evening and witnessed a recent movie
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hosts and sang “God Save the Queen”.

Our team visited the Bahrain Petroleum Company (“Bapco”).
While the operations were owned by Chevron and Texaco, both Ameri-
can companies, the expatriates were nearly all British. Presumably the
British had been hired because Bahrain was almost a semi-colony of
Britain with a resident advisor who made the critical decisions for the
government, which then adopted them. The other reason for employing
British was because wages in Britain at the time were far lower than in
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was that the Britain was uncertain of his economic future if he went
home to England. He therefore stayed to work in Bahrain but had no
incentive whatsoever to train Bahrainis to replace British personnel in
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therefore, was that Bahrain nationals were not vigorously helped to at-
tain skills and move into higher-level positions. This bred resentment
that ultimately led to the nationalization of the operation.

Qatar Petroleum Company was a small operation compared to
Aramco. Management personnel were British. The operation impressed
me as being of very ordinary caliber.
Kuwait Oil Company at Ahmadi was a very interesting opera-
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than 10 miles across. The oil produced went into tanks on a low escarp-
ment, perhaps 30 or 40 feet high. Loading into tankers was a simple
matter of draining the tanks by gravity.

Kuwait City was a very old place dating back for hundreds of
years. It had been the center for the construction of dhows, which were
the sailboats having a single sail that went up and down the Persian
Gulf. During the right season for the winds, they sailed across the tip

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