Oil in the Middle East

[potterfan3]

Why is there so much of it?

[{Dakota}]

Because it's only recently been tapped into. The UK North Sea had so much we didn't know what to do with it in the 70's, and although we're not exactly 'running out', it's depleted a lot, which has forced the Oil Companies to go looking for it elsewhere, the Middle East and East of Russia being the best places to be.

[{Dakota}]

As an addendum, there were not an awful lot of of Oil Companies in the UAE, which is another reason it's taken so long to start tapping into that area. Most of the Companies that are there now are either British or American (in bed with their Govenrment or we don't get in at all) and they didn't need to because of our own reserves. This is changing though, the likes of Shell and BP are selling off their UK North Sea assets because they deem the field non profitable, and strangely enough, it's Middle Eastern Companies buying the assets.

[wildwood]

It is due to the geographical situation of the middle east. Many moons ago it was a large sea and what is oil now was organic sea bottom debris.

[Clanad]

Ummm... the first oil production in the Middle East was in 1908... While the North Sea Fields didn't begin production until North Sea oil was discovered in the early 1960s,[ with the first well coming on line in 1971.

"In 1901, British businessman William D'Arcy convinced the Persian government to award him a concession for oil exploration, extraction, and sales in exchange for �20,000 and 16% of profits over the next 60 years." (Source: Yergin, Daniel. The Prize. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991)...
Actually, wildwood is quite accurate... This sea (described by wildwood) eventually disappeared, sealing large deposits of organic matter under a salty crust. "Over the eons, this crust was in turn covered by layer upon layer of sediment. As the sediment was compressed under the increasing weight of the layers above, it hardened into limestone. About 15 million years ago, the shifting of tectonic plates of the region formed large, underground fissures. As the organic matter migrated through the layers of limestone, much of it seeped into these fissures". (Source: World Geology)...

These deposits of organic matter became crude oil.

[tigersam258]

makes you wonder how burning of these then is so bad for the environment as its not 'man-made'.

[potterfan3]

because burning anything produces carbon dioxide which is harmful for the environment, simple

[catmando]

and (in addition to the previous answer) because we are releasing into the atmosphere in a very short time (so far only a hundred years or so) carbon that has been laid down as oil and coal over millions and millions of years.

[SarahJane12]

1. Geology
2. Believe it or not, but oil there is actually the "easiest" to access than most other areas right now, so it seems like that's where it all is. For example, the US won't tap into oil reserves in Alaska due to the fact that they have to conflict with environmental groups, and the labor and production is much more costly.

(3. Relatively speaking, there's not that much oil at all anywhere, compared to what we started with, how much we (humans) have used it and in the time we've used it, and the rate at which it is naturally created.)