The Middle East is a pancontinental province in Afro-Europe which typically comprises Western Asia all of Egypt (typically in North Africa), and Turkey. Also covers several states and territories of Arabia proper including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, or Trucial Oman (currently United Arab Emirates).
The fossils that form fossil fuels come mostly from ancient microscopic organisms that descend to the bottom of the ocean. Those on the bottom of the mound were pressed down into the earth’s crust and gradually heated into crude.
>> But if oil derives from ocean settling organisms, you might ask, why is so much of it gathered in the dry, arid Middle East?
Because, as you might have predicted, the Middle East was not all the time a vast desert. Middle East was a very abundant area with mountains and aquatic life about 300 million years ago. The carbonate basins were formed from limestone, which develop their calcium from dead aquatic life that precipitates out of the water. The seal consist of various evaporites (anhydrites, NaCl), which are impermeable to stream.
The gaps in the rocks were expanded by derived processes, making for exceptional flow characteristics. Making a basin is something like creating a cake, you require all the right constituents, a container and it has to heat at the right temperature for a period of time.
About 100 - 300 million years ago the area was shielded by Tethys Ocean, Rivers feeding this ancient ocean soaked it with nutrients, giving rise to huge numbers of microscopic animals fated to be pressure cooked into oil.
Two features for the oil basin, is that it has to be big enough and oil can stream easily. It is also essentials to remember that the Middle East area during the age of carbon was nearly jungle-like for millions of years, not the dry arid desserts as we seen today.
The Tethys finally retreated and gave way to the sandy Middle East we know nowadays. But it left behind a reminder of the region’s watery past in the form of massive oceans of oil buried beneath the sand.
It is widely known that the Middle East is king of oil production. Saudi Arabia has more than 260 billion barrels of confirmed reserves. Iran has 136 billion, Iraq and Kuwait jointly approximately 120 billion. Collectively, Middle Eastern stocks account for about 40% of the world’s known oil.
Posted by: Lusubilo A. Mwaijengo
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