In 1938, oil was discovered at Dhahran, near the Persian Gulf, and a small oasis became a modern city, complete with the sleek headquarters of the Saudi Aramco national oil company. If you re an American or British oil worker, life is good in the Dhahran Hills, where homes in the suburban enclaves are made of brick or fieldstone, and despite the desert heat the gardens blossom with large shade trees, flowering bougainvil-lea and oleander. There are bike paths, a 27-hole golf course, a rugby field and horse stables. Once life was like this for oil workers in Texas, where roadside oil wells were symbols of a new American prosperity. Oil drillers struck a geyser of black gold at Spindletop, near Beaumont, in 1901, and landowners were soon selling $100 tracts for $20,000 and more. Instant millionaires were created, leading to the cliche of the hick in cowboy boots who paid cash for his Cadillac. But today, after yielding 153 million barrels of oil, old Spindletop is mostly a museum site. Texas still has 129 billion barrels of oil, by some estimates, but it is located deep beneath the earth, making economic recovery difficult. The average well in Texas today produces nine barrels of oil a day, compared to 6,000 barrels in oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
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