Page 77 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

74 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

To remove any doubts about its attitude to these protests, especially in the
light of the defence statement of February 1966 announcing the intended
British withdrawal from Aden by 1968, the British government informed the

Saudis that same month that it intended to honour its obligations to the Truciai
Shaikhs. At the same time the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Shaikh Shakhbut, was told
that the pledge applied also to the frontiers of his shaikhdom, and that he
would be afforded any support that was deemed necessary to uphold them. A

few months later, in August 1966, Shakhbut was replaced as ruler by his
brother Zayid. The following April Zayid travelled to Riyad, as a matter of
courtesy, to pay his respects to King Faisal. He was greeted, not with fraternal
pleasantries but with a new frontier claim (see map p. 211). Although it was not
quite as spectacular as that of 1949 - it demanded only three-quarters as
opposed to four-fifths of the shaikhdom - it was, like the earlier claim,

connected with oil exploration, its intention being clearly to deprive Abu
Dhabi of two oilfields which had lately been discovered in the southern
Dhafrah. Zayid told Faisal he would have to discuss the claim with his family
and took his departure. He never sent a reply.

Throughout the 1960s ARAMCO had been surveying along the northern
edges of the Rub al-Khali and in the Kidan, the high dune country south of the
Liwa. ADPC had likewise been exploring in and around the Liwa, and
southwards through the Batin-Liwa, the tract immediately below the oasis, to
the edges of the Kidan further south. Both companies had observed the Riyad

Line as die boundary between their spheres of operation. ARAMCO had
detected the existence of a large, possibly oil-bearing, structure in the Uruq
al-Shaiba, to the south of the Riyad Line and extending up to it. ADPC’s
surveys had revealed the existence of a northern extension of the structure

above the Riyad Line, to which the company had given the designation of the
Zarrara structure. Early in 1968 ARAMCO commenced drilling on the Shaiba
structure, and continued drilling until late in 1969. ADPC commenced drill­
ing on the Zarrara structure in January 1970. The results of the drilling on both
sides revealed the presence of a large oilfield under the structure. It did not
require a great deal of prescience to realize that a reassertion of Saudi Arabia s

frontier claim was now only a matter of time.

In the first week of May 1970 Zayid again visited Riyad. He went on his own
initiative with two principal objects in mind - to obtain from Faisal some

definite expression of his attitude towards the proposed federation of the nine
Gulf shaikhdoms, and to express to him his own apprehensions, and those 0
his fellow shaikhs, about the growing menace of subversion in the u >
especially in view of the Marxist rebellion currently going on in Dhufar ( e
southernmost province of Oman), a menace which, Zayid believed, cou on y
be effectively countered if the Gulf rulers, including Faisal, acted in concert

against it. Faisal listened with half an ear to what Zayid had to say, t en