This is were oil was extracted for the first time in the region, in 1932 somewhere in the desert of Bahrain; 74 years after Edwin Drake had pioneered the method of drilling for oil in the USA (of course I just looked this up! How am I suppose to know this?!). By the way, according to some original letters I saw in the tiny museum close to the place the above picture was taken, the communications connection to Bahrain was considered to be quite good at that time - with a British ship calling once every two weeks...Today, an oil company is still the largest business in Bahrain, followed by an aluminium producer. But the tiny Kingdom of Bahrain (665 sq km, about 1 mio people on one main and 32 small islands) is strong in areas such as finance, as a result of a conscious decision. Oil is running out there. And watch out for the F1 GP there next week on their racing track built just five years ago, with Michael Schumacher currently holding the lap record of 1m30.252 (Ferrari, 2004)!
It's funny to see how the installations and pipelines simply run in an almost randomly fashion openly on the ground, and even right through residential areas. Considering that oil is still one of the pillars of our Western lifestyle, producing it seems pretty low-tech. Or so it was at the beginning of the oil age.
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