It occurred to me when the jeep hit a bad pothole and my head hit the ceiling, adding another misery to the already aching neck, shoulders, the hips, the lower back and the seat. This was probably the richest and the poorest road in the world, I thought. I was on my way to find a place called Samah, an oilfield in the Libyan Sahara desert.

11:00 am, 11 December 2007
My journey started from Tripoli, Libya, (there is a Tripoli in Lebanon too, there is a Tripoli in Iowa, one in Wisconsin and yet another one in Greece). My efforts to find road maps to my destination, Samah, had failed. Google Earth was very slow and finding a thin black line of a road that vanished and reappeared in the all brown background was providing no clues. Asking from people was fruitless, as no one I knew had heard of the place. When I asked the people at WOC head office in Tripoli, they gave me a pipeline map - a pipeline buried under a meter of sand in the desert.

Samah oilfield is being managed by Waha Oil Company (called WOC) in Libya. Al Waha is an arabic word that means oasis. Al means "the". WOC took over the operations of an american company called Oasis which until 1986 used to be owned 59.2% by Libya, 16.3% by Conoco (then the operator), 16.3% by Marathon and 8.2% by Amerada Hess. The takeover was a part of a plan that started in 1973 to own 100% of the three major American oil companies working in Libya, namely Oasis, Texaco and Occidental, after Oasis was accused of allowing Israeli spies disguised as oil workers. The funny part is that American oil executives were asked to submit plans of their own buyout.

On December 21, 1988, a Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York blew up over Scotland, killing all 259 people aboard the Boeing 747 jumbo jet and 11 residents of the town of Lockerbie. In late 1991, the United States and Britain accused Libyans Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima of involvement. In March 1992, U.N. Security Council Resolution 748 told Libya to surrender the suspects. Libya refused and sanctions were imposed on April 15, 1992. The U.N. Security Council later imposed an air and arms embargo and a ban on some oil equipment on Libya in 1992 and 1993 to pressure Tripoli to hand over two Libyan suspects for trial. Sanctions were suspended when Libya turned them over in April 1999. Britain restored diplomatic ties with Libya in 1999 when the two accused Libyans were handed over to the UK for trial. Intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was convicted. The second suspect was acquitted. On April 30, 2003, the Libyan government accepted responsibility for Lockerbie and set up a fund to compensate victims' families. Compensation could reach $2.7 billion, or $10 million per victim. Under the deal an initial $4 million would be paid for each victim once U.N. sanctions ended. That would be followed by another $4 million if the United States lifts its sanctions and by $2 million if it drops Libya from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. On the other hand Germany still wants compensation for victims of attack on a Berlin discotheque and refuses to lift an arms embargo.

Sirte basin in Libya ranked 13th largest oil basin in the world contains approximately 80% of Libya's proven oil reserves and accounts for 90% of production. Libyan onshore oil has been discovered mainly in three geological trends of the Sirte Basin. The western fairway, which includes several large oil fields (Samah, Beida, Raguba, Dahra-Hofra, and Bahi). The North-center of the country, which contains the giant Defa-Waha field and Nasser fields, as well as the large Hateiba gas field. The Easterly trend, which has large fields like Sarir, Messla, Gialo, Bu Attifel, Intisar, Nafoora-Augila, and Amal. Samah is 120 kilometers from Defa-Waha oilfield.

Waha is about 400 kilometers from the southern shore of the Mediterranean sea. In the central/southern part of the Sirte Basin, south of the Waha mountains. Waha oilfield was a giant found in 1960 by Conoco at 6,000 feet. Since 1992 production has fallen from 190,000 b/d to less than 40,000 b/d of 36 degrees API oil, which has caused WOC's output to fall from 500,000 b/d in the 1980s to 400,000 b/d in 1992 and 300,000 b/d now. Waha and WOC's other fields are linked to the Es Sider terminal on the Mediterranean coast by a 267-mile pipeline. WOC has been the worst sufferer of the US embargo. This is because its fields have been equipped mainly with US-made machinery for which it could not get spare parts. In the same way, at their peak in 1970, fields operated by another oil company Oxy, produced 660,000 barrels a day. Today those old fields, operated by National Oil Corporation, produce fewer than 100,000 barrels a day. There is obviously a reason why Libya wanted the sanctions ended at any costs. A senior libyan politician recently said, Americans would take the risk and invest to upgrade the Libyan oil infrastructure. I say the politician was very polite in praising the Americans, because who would not invest and take such risks with the upcoming elections, the soaring oil prices, an oil giant Iran becoming a nuisance, another oil giant Saudi Arabia experiencing home grown terrorists, and amidst all this Libya providing premium grade oil at half the travel distance. And with estimated reserves of roughly 36 billion barrels--the 9th-largest reserve in the world--Libya is not about to run out of oil anytime soon. The oil reservoirs on this richest road of the world are located a comparatively shallow 5,000 feet below the surface, and the crude flows abundantly. Moreover, it costs just a few dollars per barrel in Libya as compared with $5 to $10 in Texas or the North Sea - no wonder Yankees are salivating to come back.

My visit to Samah was followed by the redevelopment phase started by WOC in Samah and I had to establish the first contact with the oilfields site management and also find means and methods to mobilize manpower, tools, equipment and materials to execute and upcoming project. I flew into Ras Lanuf using a chartered flight that serves the Petro Canada oilfields in the region and started looking around to rent a four wheel drive jeep for my onward journey. Four wheel drive vehicles were not allowed to be owned or driven in the cities and you could find them only in the desert, either owned by people living in the desert or the oil companies involved in exploration. A typical problem is that such vehicles owned by citizens are not in a very good shape. Ras Lanuf is an oilfields terminal at the southern most shores of the Mediterranean sea and a town with around 40,000 inhabitants consisting of the employees of the nearby oil industries. If you look at the map of the Mediterranean sea, two cities "Ras Lanuf" and "Marsa Al burayqah" show at the southern most shores of the sea in the Gulf of Sidra. This makes the length of the pipeline shorter bringing crude oil from the mid Sahara, and ships come closer to the source. Petro Canada (called Veba Oil Operations in Libya) and Ras Lanuf Oil and Gas processing Company (called RASCO) operate from the Ras Lanuf Terminal. Watching million barrel ships getting loaded at the terminal every few days and sailing off to distant lands carrying a 100 million dollar worth of brown, black or green goop, makes you ponder over the priorities of our world.

Faraj, a local transporter who provides various services to our company came to help and promised to bring a dependable jeep at 2:30pm. He finally decided to show up at 5pm, when I had almost lost hope and was about to start my journey into the sahara on a two wheel regular pickup used by our site engineer at Ras Lanuf. A young driver dressed in an orange T-shirt, camouflage colored 24 pocketed jungle pants, and a mullet head did not speak English. I do not speak Arabic. Faraj and Omar the driver kept speaking in Arabic and it seemed that they were both not sure where Samah is. They kept saying "Mafeesh muskkala" and "inshallah" which actually means "no problem" and "God willing" but when said is such situations may also mean "I am not sure" and "you are on your own" etc. etc.

5:15 pm, 11 December 2007
When we left Ras lanuf the sun had already set and you could see the crimson line on the horizon. The jeep had no air conditioning or heating and one could smell the fuel inside. There were no seat belts and the seats could not be reclined. It took us an hour and a half to arrive at Al Burayqah which is east of Ras Lanuf. Also commonly known as Brega, its a small town on the Gulf of Sidra mainly inhabited by the employees of Sirte Oil Company and The Al-Nahr Company. It was originally a small fishing village which was destroyed completely during the second world war. It contained nothing but land mines when it was chosen as a terminal for the first ever oil pipeline in Libya. Active exploration started in Libya in 1953 after oil was discovered in neighboring Algeria. The first well was begun in 1956 in western Fezzan, and the first oil was struck in 1957. Esso (subsequently ExxonMobil) made the first commercial strike in 1959, just as several firms were planning to give up exploration. The first oil flowed by pipeline from Esso's concession at Zelten 120kms south of Al Burayqah to its export facilities at Marsa al Burayqah in 1961. The rush was on, with other companies entering Libya and additional discoveries being made. By 1969 about 33 oil companies held concessions for oil exploration and marketing in Libya.

Libyan crude oil, while having a rather high wax content, is lighter and easier to handle than crudes from most other petroleum areas. It also has a low sulfur content, which makes it easier on internal combustion engines and less of a pollution contributant than other crudes. For this reason, Libyan crudes had a receptive market in Europe from the start; furthermore, Libya is one-third closer to European markets than the oil ports of the eastern Mediterranean. When the Suez Canal was closed by the June 1967 War, forcing tankers from Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula to go around the Cape of Good Hope, the advantages of Libyan petroleum were enhanced. Moreover, the lay of the land itself, which allows the output of the wells to be piped directly and easily to dockside totally over Libya's territory, assured steadiness of supply, which has not necessarily been the case for eastern Mediterranean pipeline outlets. In addition, Libya's petroleum development benefited from the technology and experience acquired by the industry in other parts of the petroleum world during the preceding fifty years. Thus, by 1977 Libya was the seventh largest oil producer in the world. However, Libya's position declined somewhat in the early 1980s as OPEC production quotas were cut. By 1986 Libya was only the fifteenth largest producer of crude oil.

At present, there is an oil refinery belonging to and run by Sirte Oil Company, which is a subsidiary of the state owned National Oil Corporation (NOC). In July 1970, NOC's jurisdiction was expanded by legislation that nationalized the foreign-owned Esso, Shell, and Ente Nazionale Idrocarbuno (ENI) marketing subsidiaries, and also a small local company, Petro Libya, and transferred their operations to NOC. These operations included managing companies in the importing, distributing, and selling of refined petroleum products at subsidized prices in Libya. In 1971 as a result of the Libyan governments nationalization campaign, the 4 companies were merged into a single countrywide marketing enterprise called the Brega Company, which also marketed oil and gas abroad for the government. The refinery was run in partnership with the Esso during the 60’s and 70's. By the early 80’s, Esso had left, passing full control over to Sirte Oil Company. If you have ever been to the Exxon facility in Texas, you will find no difference while roaming around Brega.

6:30 pm, 11 December 2007
Driving south on the road starting from Brega, the first huge establishment that falls on the east side of the road is the pipe manufacturing plant of the Al-Nahr Company Ltd (ANC). Al-Nahr is government owned execution arm or the main contractor of the Great Man Made River project (GMMR) in Libya. GMMR is a man made network of pipes, approximately 2000 kilometers long, mostly 4 meters in diameter, weighing approximately 80 tons per 7.5 meter length, bringing water from the fossil aquifer known as the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System. It accumulated during the last ice age and is not currently being replenished.

Some sources say that it is the largest engineering project ever taken and is locally termed as the eighth wonder of the world. The largest underground network of pipes in the world consists of more than 1300 wells, most more than 500m deep, and currently supplies 6,500,000 m³ of freshwater per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. In 1953, efforts to find oil in southern Libya led to the discovery of huge quantities of fresh water underground. The GMMR was conceived in the late 1960s and work on the project began in 1984. The then Brown & Root of Houston now owned by Halliburton created the specifications and Price Brothers of Ohio were responsible for designing and supplying the pipe manufacturing equipment. The primary contractor for the first phases was a Korean Company called Dong Ah. Due to budget constraints, at present the main contractor is Al Al-Nahr Company Ltd and Dong Ah has 25% shares in Al Al-Nahr The total cost of the project is projected at more than 25 billion US dollars. Libya claims to have completed the work to date without the financial support of major countries or loans from world banks. On 28 August 1984, foundation stones for two plants, for manufacturing the prestressed concrete cylinder pipes were laid - one at Brega and the other one at Sarir, which is the main location of the aquifer. The main labor force comprised of low cost bodies like of Philippinos, Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, and Egyptians. Many countries of the world and newspapers have called the GMMR a mysterious project in the past. The 1997, the New York Post said though the gargantuan lattice work of underground pipes, wells and pumping stations will someday make the desert bloom from Tripoli to Kufra in the deep desert, the pipeline is also an underground tunnel stretching from Tunisia to Egypt and in the south, it will reach almost to Sudan and Chad. In the same year, a British army intelligence officer said that the 2-7 meter deep pipeline tunnel system could allow Libya to conceal troop movements, gain an element of surprise over an enemy, and protect the troops from pre-emptive strikes. Many theorists also tried to find similarities between North Korea's underground military system with elaborate storage facilities and tunnel routes for vehicles and troops. Despite the fact that the money generating oil industry was suffering from the embargo on trade since 1986, yet the money spending GMMR was awash with American equipment as the whole project relied on Cummins engines, Caterpillar earth-moving equipment, Baker Hughes drilling bits, Dowell Schlumberger cementing units and chemicals, as well as mining and drilling equipment from Soilmec and other international companies. Similarly, GE did business in Libya during the sanction years through its Italian subsidiary Nuovo Pignone. Thus many American companies got around the sanctions by having the work in Libya done by their foreign subsidiaries. CNN website says, While sanctions crippled Iraq's oil industry, the embargo against Libya proved as porous as the sedimentary rock that holds its oil. Transactions made by proxy are beyond the reach of the American sanctions law only if the subsidiary acts strictly on its own, without any guidance from its American parent. The European Union did not bar commercial trade with Libya, largely because many European countries relied on Libya for their oil and gas. It is revenue from the oil trade that finances the Great Man-Made River Project. And thus, one way that Libya acquires American equipment is by routing it through European companies and sister offices of American companies, with or without the American company's knowledge of the ultimate destination - how convenient it seems to bypass the embargo. Some one once said, its not important to be doing things in the right way, but the important thing is that you should give the impression of doing things the right way. The inception of GMMR gave birth to a number of conspiracy theories, yet many researchers and analysts considered the 25 billion spending on a military strategy or a water supply scheme a little excessive.

But think of it again, trying to make the world's biggest desert bloom at any cost seems like a miracle not just the eighth wonder of the world. Time magazine has called the GMMR a plan to make the desert gush. For a long time, Libya's supply of water came from underground aquifers or desalination plants on the coast. Water derived from desalination or aquifers near the coast was of poor quality and sometimes undrinkable. Excessive abstraction led to large draw down of water table and consequently sea water intrusion to the coast aquifers. Also very little water was available for irrigating land for agriculture in a largely desert country. Different options had been considered to address this problem, which included importing water by ships, desalination of seawater, or laying a pipeline from Europe. Geological revelations during the oil rush in Libya showed that up to 120,000 cubic kilometers of water lay beneath the Sahara Desert dating 14-38,000 years. If water is extracted from this aquifer at a rate of 1380 MCMY, it will last 4800 years. It emerged that within a given budget, the Great Man-Made River Project would yield five times more water cost effectively than the above three options combined. The project will carry more than 5 million cubic meters per day across the desert and increase the size of arable land from 327,000 hectares (1991) by 60,000 hectares (1992) and another 180,000 hectares in the second half of the decade. GMMR will be pumping more than twice as much water a day as the present volume of OPEC's daily oil production. It has been recorded in the Guinness Book of Records (1993) with respect to cost, period of construction, number of personnel involved, equipment and technology used. The Great Man-Made River is a new lesson and an example in the struggle to achieve self-sufficiency and food security. UNEP says, as all materials are locally manufactured from locally available raw materials, GMMR could also be the biggest projects in the world ensuring the concept of sustainability.

The richness of the road does not end at the Al Al-Nahr PCCP (Precast Concrete Cylinder Pipe) manufacturing plant spread on some 60 hectares, where approximately 10,000 humans and 4500 machines look like ants working on huge pipe cylinders. Prestressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe (PCCP) consists of a steel cylinder embedded in a concrete core, which is helically wrapped with high-strength, hard-drawn wire after curing. The wire is embedded in a thick cement slurry and coated with a dense cement mortar. An easily assembled watertight joint is provided by using bell and spigot steel joint rings welded to the ends of the cylinder and sealed with a confined round rubber gasket. Our jeep was stopped at a check post and the drivers exchanged some sentences in Arabic with the policemen and we were allowed to carry on with our onwards journey. As it was getting dark, I was getting familiarized with the strange language of flashing head light and the indicators that Omar was continuously using to communicate with other vehicles on the single road. A right flasher meant that the vehicle behind could overtake and the left probably meant "if you try to pass me, please live to tell that I warned you". A timed combination of flashers meant thank you and a timed high and low combination of head light meant "if you are not blind then i might as well ensure that".

7:05 pm, 11 December 2007
We were stopped by armed policemen at a barrier on the road and they asked Omar for vehicle registration documents. He was about to reach the glove compartment when the conversation between them took a friendly turn and so there was no need to show the papers. They started discussing the route to Samah and after a few "Inshallah" we were allowed to proceed. A few meters from the barrier a road turned westwards and upon my asking Omar said that it was the road to Haqal Hateeba. Haqal is an arabic work meaning an oilfield. Haqool is the plural of Haqal.

Omar was driving at 30 kilometers per hour and later I found out he was anticipating a bad patch on the road. The bad patch soon turned into huge cracks that looked like alligators, crescents, ruts and potholes the size of the jeep. Omar left the road and starting driving in the sand following tire tracks for miles and miles. Soon the older tracks on the dirt too were causing a lot of discomfort and he kept looking for undisturbed sand to drive on.

After about half an hour of zig zagging on both sides of the road, I noticed that we had not seen a single vehicle on the road. Although, you would see a bright light at a distance every now and then, which would turn out to be a gas flare from an oilfield when you approached near. There were flares every few kilometers on both sides. We were driving on the road that connected about 230 oil wells, and the area was responsible for the biggest chunk of crude production in the country. We climbed the small mountainous range of Zelten mountains and saw some lights from a few rigs, a flare and a pool of something approaching soon.

Interest in GeoPhysics or similar faculties of science, and a simple search on the web can provide a lot of information on the Sirte-Zelten Petroleum system. There is one dominant petroleum system in the Sirte Basin sourced by the Cretaceous Sirte Shale. In the Central Sirte Basin, carbonates of Upper Cretaceous, Paleocene and Eocene age produce in 150 fields on significant horst blocks or platforms (e.g., the Beda and Zelten platforms). Reservoirs are largely carbonate build-ups and reefs with some offshore production in the Gulf of Sirte. Carbonate reservoirs are largely related to two Upper Cretaceous and two Paleocene cycles of sedimentation in a syn-rift fill sequence; however, there is minor Mid-Cretaceous calcarenite production. Giant oil fields in this unit include Intistar, Beda, Defa, Waha, Haram, Zelten (Nasser), Hofra and Nafoora. Upper Cretaceous Sirte Shale of the Rakb Group is the dominant source rock. Geochemical data of 81 oils demonstrate that the Sirte Shale generates a low sulfur, high gravity oil with low gas oil ratios. Generation began in Eocene era and continues to present. Onshore the petroleum is dominantly oil; however, offshore increased thermal gradients and deeper burial suggest higher gas oil ratios and natural gas potential. The Upper Cretaceous carbonate reservoirs are commonly dolomites whereas the lower Paleocene cycles include calcilutites, calcarenites, oolites and skeletal debris. The petroleum system is named after the Zelten Formation, which was deposited in this latter Paleocene transgression.

There are about 40,000 conventional oil and gas fields in the world, where as 90% of the known reserves are concentrated in fewer than 1500 giant fields in less than 15 countries. The biggest conventional field in the world has a proven capacity of around 80 billion barrels and is in Saudi Arabia called the Ghawar field, also known as "the elephant of all elephants" in the oil industry. The second biggest is in Kuwait, the third in Mexico and the fourth in Venezuela. The Sarir field is the biggest in Libya with about 12 billion estimated reserves.

7:30 pm, 11 December 2007
We were stopped again by armed policemen and this time we were asked about our destination and show them our desert passes. A desert pass is provided to oilfield workers like me by the Libyan Government after extensive security checks and you can not enter the oilfields areas, refineries or export terminals without a desert pass. A desert pass is valid for only two months. I have some friends who have been working in the Libyan oilfields for the last 25 years and they have been renewing their desert passes after every two months too. A road branched off to the west going to the town of Marada. Marada is the second biggest town with around 11000 inhabitants in the municipality (Baladia in Arabic) of Adjabiya. Adjabiya being the biggest town and the commercial centre in the municipality with about 31000 inhabitants. The local VEBA Oil Operations (VOO) a subsidiary of Petro Canada currently produces some 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from its Zenad/ Ghani, Jofra, Lehib/ Marada, Tibisti, Barrut North, En Naga and Amal oilfields located in the Sirte Basin of Libya. I had visited Zenad/ Ghani, Jofra, Tibisti and Amal in the past and all these cities were connected by air using small planes and even the roads were quite reasonable. I also knew that Marada connects Ghani, Jofra and Tibisti. Later while returning from Samah I found out that Samah was 40 kilometers south of Tibisti. I wished someone had given me this information earlier.

7:50 pm, 11 December 2007
A few minutes after the check post we were slowed down by sand piling on the road with blowing nightly winds in the desert. The road became worst and the piling sand was filling the potholes making it a comfortable drive. I thanked my luck for not embarking on this journey on a 2x4 vehicle as crossing these sand piles at this time of the night would have ensured a night stay in the vehicle in the middle of now cooling down sahara. The temperatures in sahara can rise to 55 degrees C in the day and go down to 5 degrees C in the night. The window or split type air-conditioners installed in the accommodations in the desert, which are mostly portable cabins made of insulated sandwich panels, have to have heat pumps. And on a normal day, you will be running your cooler at full blast. In the night the heater at full blast is not uncommon too.

8:10 pm, 11 December 2007
I heard a beep on my cell phone and was amazed to see that I had maximum reception signals. Omar told me that the Almadar Telecom works for around 50 kilometers in this area. We were stopped at another check post and we were asked to show our desert passes again. Just after the check post the road divides into two, one leg going to the Haqal Jabal which was on my route to Samah, and the other leg entering Haqal Nasser or the Zelten area. We saw a very small grocery store which Omar mentioned was the only super market serving a diameter of around 200 kilometers. We also noticed that it was closed at that time. A few meters from the check post we saw an overturned car and the driver stopped to investigate or was it to urinate, I wasn't sure. There is an unwritten protocol in the desert, where you must stop and offer help, if you see a vehicle stopped or especially overturned on the roadside. He tapped the car, kicked the bonnet and called a few times to ensure that there was no one inside. A few more zig zags around the richest and the poorest road and we started climbing the Jabal Waha - the mountain of the oasis. It was quiet dark and I couldn't see the shape of the mountains, I could just notice the hallows at a distance, so I decided to make my return journey when there was enough day light. I saw camps of many international and local oil service companies like Baker Eastern and Schlumberger on the west side of the road.

United States, China, Japan, Russia and Germany are the biggest consumers and USA, China, Japan, Germany and South Korea are the biggest importers of oil in the world. Looking at a list of largest producers, exporters, consumers and importers of oil in the world, one can see that USA is the third largest producer with 8 million barrels per day but also is the largest consumer at 22 million barrels per day, meaning USA imports about 12 million barrels per day, making her the largest importer too. Saudi Arabia on the other hand is the largest producer and the largest exporter, exports 8 million barrels per day, almost the same as what USA produces. The United States, with about 5% of the world's population, is responsible for 25% of the world's oil consumption while only having 3% of the world's proven oil reserves. China being the sixth largest producer at 4 million barrels per day consumes almost double of her production and thus has to import 4 million barrels per day. Presently, Libya contests for the 15th largest oil producing country in the world and the 11th largest exporter. There are 8 countries in the world that consume more than 2 million barrels per day, 6 countries in the world that import more than 2 million barrels per day, 16 counties in the world that produce more than 2 million barrels per day and only 8 that can export more than 2 million barrels per day. In Saudi Arabia on an average a person uses 75 barrels per year, in United States 60 barrels per year, in UK around 30 barrels per year, in China about 5 barrels per year and in Pakistan about 2 barrels per year. The world uses 12.5 barrels per capita per year. There are about 132 oil companies in the world - the biggest being in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, Russia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya and Algeria, listed as ranked in size. Only Russian company is not state owned in this list. The next in line is Rosneft which is a state owned Russian company. The largest private sector energy companies called the "supermajors" are ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Chevron and Conoco. Many of these supermajors are accused of cartels and manipulating the political decisions of the world as they are known to have the ability to seat and unseat kings and presidents, have army generals and members of parliaments on their pay roll and plot a coup de tat with the twitch of an eye. As competition grows for an increasingly scarce but vital resource, the strategic calculations of major and minor countries alike place more prominent emphasis on the pumping, refining, transport and use of petroleum products. Maintaining access to oil , in a fair or unfair way, continues to affect the political decision making of governments around the world. "Petroleum Politics" and "Petroleum Diplomacy" are important terms in the world politics.

All oil reserves in the world are typically owned by the governments of the host country. The governments issue licenses and allocate concessions to companies like ExxonMobil or Shell to explore, develop, produce and market oil. As exploration involves many risks and huge investments, the exploration companies typically form joint ventures and nominate one of them as an operator to supervise the work.

8:15 pm, 11 December 2007
The road became wider, almost to 8 meters, with a fewer potholes, but was not carpeted, making the sound of tires and ingress of dust in the jeep to highest.

8:45 pm, 11 December 2007
We passed the end of Sirte Oil Company's jurisdiction and were about to enter WOC's jurisdiction or the concessions. We passed a few rigs illuminated extensively.Omar told me that the two rigs, one on the right and the other a few kilometers away on the left were new on the road and were of Chinese Origin. A few years ago, Chinese rigging equipment was considered inferior and no one trisected their exploration or development efforts with Chinese equipment. This trend had changed in recent years. I did not know if the reason in this shift was the rising price of oil or advancement in the Chinese technology. Today you could buy a 1000 - 1300 Horsepower Chinese rig off of the website for a couple of million dollars complete with all mud pumping equipment etc.

Oil is not new to mankind. There were oil pits near Babylon and asphalt was used to construct roads and towers. Earliest known oil wells using drill bits and bamboo poles were drilled in China in around 347 CE. In 7th century, petroleum was known as burning water in Japan and Chine and used to evaporate brine and produce salt and light the evenings. 8th century roads of Baghdad used tar. Petroleum was distilled by Persian chemist al-Razi in the 9th century, producing chemicals such as kerosene in the al-ambiq (alembic). In 10th century a bamboo pipeline network existed to connect oil wells to salt springs in China. Oilfields of Baku containing shiploads of naptha were described by the geographer Masudi in the 10th century, and by Marco Polo in the 13th century.

The industry grew slowly in the 1800s, driven by the demand for kerosene and oil lamps.The modern era of oil production began on August 27, 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful oil well 69 feet deep near Titusville in northwestern Pennsylvania. Just five years earlier, the invention of the kerosene lamp had ignited intense demand for oil. By drilling an oil well, Drake had hoped to meet the growing demand for oil for lighting and industrial lubrication. Drake's success inspired hundreds of small companies to explore for oil. In 1860, world oil production reached 500,000 barrels; by the 1870s production soared to 20 million barrels annually. In 1879, the first oil well was drilled in California; and in 1887, in Texas. But as production boomed, prices fell and oil industry profits declined. In 1882, John D. Rockefeller devised a solution to the problem of unbridled competition in the oil fields: the Standard Oil trust, which brought together forty of the nation's leading refiners. Through its control of refining, Standard Oil (later ESSO and now ExxonMobil) was temporarily able to control the price of oil. The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of companies was created in February 1907 when the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (legal name in Dutch, N.V. Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij) and the "Shell" Transport and Trading Company Ltd of the United Kingdom merged their operations – a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with the then monopolistic American oil company, Standard Oil. Even until the mid-1950s, coal was still the world's foremost fuel, but oil quickly took over. It became a major national concern in the early part of the 20th century; the introduction of the internal combustion engine provided a demand that has largely sustained the industry to this day.

9:00 pm, 11 December 2007
I saw a glow of lights at a distance in the south when Omar turned westwards on a branch road. The lights in the south were coming from Haqal Waha, which is about 25km further. We had turned right for Samah and had about 120 more kilometers to travel. I was expecting a sandy track but the road got better and better for the next 10 kilometers.

9:30 pm, 11 December 2007
There was a haqal on the south side of the road but I could not see the name on the branch board as Omar was speeding at 140 kilometers an hour. It happened all of a sudden when Omar Jammed his brakes as the carpeted road ended with no warning and what we saw was kind of a roundabout in the sand with few dirt tracks in five different directions.

9:36 pm, 11 December 2007
Omar got out of the jeep and started deflating tires. There was a sign board that we had not seen earlier at one corner of the roundabout. It was for a Turkish company called TPOC. I had never heard of this name before. Someone had written NC189 on a nearby drum that was painted white and red. I saw another drum with the same alphanumeric number on it. We turned our jeep in the direction between the two oil drums/ barrels and saw tow lines of red and white drums on both sides of a track. Omar claimed that he knew the path between the drums would take us to Samah.

Omar was having fun driving in the sand and with deflated tires, he also managed to perform some stunts. The tracks were not straight, and had very sharp turns, for no obvious reason. In a wide desert with nothing put space at hand people had made a million tracks in the sand, confusing people like me, who were not aware of the general direction of the destination.

9:50 pm, 11 December 2007
We passed a small station with two very small, probably 500 barrel tanks and a network of pipes, valves, manifolds and equipment fenced by a barbed wire and poles. Some of these tanks can be as big as one million barrels. Looking at few christmas trees in the area and huge network of piping is overwhelming, makes me scared sometimes of the stuff running through the pipes, highly inflammable, moving at high pressures, poisonous gases that need to be burnt right away and the reactions taking place in those huge separators. The earth contains mysterious stuff in its belly. Most geologists view crude oil and natural gas as the product of compression and heating of ancient organic materials over geological time of millions of years. The biogenic theory says that oil is formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae which have been settled to the sea (or lake) bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions. Anoxic means in water depleted of oxygen. Zooplankton means drifting animals that are either unicellular or multicellular. Over geological time this organic matter got mixed with mud and got buried under heavy layers of sediment. The resulting high levels of heat and pressure caused the organic matter to chemically change into a waxy material known as kerogen and the process is called diagenesis, which is found in various oil shales around the world. Oil shale is also termed as immature oil. The biggest reserve of immature oil is in Green River which is a tributary of Colorado River. Extraction of Oil shale for usable hydrocarbon is still going through evolution and is not economically feasible due to the comparatively lower prices of relatively easily drillable mature of conventional oil.

At some places on the earth the kerogen got cooked naturally in a process known as "cartagenesis" and formed the shape of liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons, meaning the petroleum and natural gas - the mature oil. Oil geologists speak of an "oil window," which has to happen if oil is to be produced in the earth. Oil window is at a depth of 4 - 6 kilometers and actually refers to a temperature range at these depths that oil forms in. Below the window's minimum temperature or the depth, the oil remains trapped in the form of kerogen, within the window it cracks into oil and above the maximum temperature the oil cracks into natural gas. Because most hydrocarbons are lighter than rock or water, these often migrate upward or sideways or downwards through adjacent rock layers until they either reach the surface or become trapped beneath impermeable rocks. These trapped hydrocarbon reservoirs are called oilfields.

The pressure generated from cracking is so much that the oil begins migrating to upper strata and some one from Chevron or Shell or ExxonMobil or Petro Canada notices it using a gravity survey or magnetic survey to detect large scale features of the sub-surface geology. Features of interest (known as leads) are subjected to more detailed seismic surveys which work on the principle of the time it takes for reflected sound waves to travel through matter (rock) of varying densities and using the process of "depth conversion" to create a profile of the substructure. Finally, when a prospect has been identified and evaluated and passes the oil company's selection criteria, an exploration well is drilled in an attempt to conclusively determine the presence or absence of oil or gas. Typical Shallow shelf oil wells (e.g. North sea) cost $10 - 30 Million, while deep water wells can cost up to $100 Million plus. Hundreds of smaller companies search for onshore hydrocarbon deposits worldwide, with some wells costing as little as $500,000 USD.

Interestingly, it is believed that a vast majority of oil that the earth produced millions of years ago has long ago escaped to the surface due to upward migration and been biodegraded by oil-eating bacteria. It is still escaping as obvious from oil seeps, natural gas seeps, pockmarks (underwater craters caused by escaping gas). The Oil companies are actually looking for the small fraction that has been trapped by this rare combination of circumstances. A good example is the Oil sands or Tar sands of Athabasca also called the bitumen oil in Alberta Canada, which are reservoirs of partially biodegraded oil still in the process of escaping, but contain so much migrating oil that, although most of it has escaped, vast amounts are still present. The oil available is much more than can be found in conventional oil reservoirs/ oilfields being pumped.

The cost of a barrel of oil extracted from the shale ranges from as high as US$95 per barrel to as low US$12 per barrel. However it would be prudent to think that costs would be inline with those of the Tar sands and so an oil price in the US$30-40 per barrel range would be considered realistic for them to be profitable. The industry is proceeding cautiously, due to the losses occurred during the last major investment into oil shale in the early 1980s, when a subsequent collapse in the oil price left the projects uneconomic and the companies incurred large losses.

I asked Omar to enter the station, a probable sign of life after around 2 hours of driving, so that we could ask someone about Samah. We found someone in the control room and he showed a general direction to Omar in Arabic Language. Soon a Philippinos guy drove in the station on a red Dodge Durango and I asked him about Samah in English language. We still had about 25 more kilometers to go.

10:15 pm, 11 December 2007
We were crossing an air strip and we could see three clusters of lights in the dark. I asked Omar to head towards the biggest cluster, knowing that the main station of an oilfield should have the largest number of lights.

There are many scientists who oppose the biological connection between fossils and petroleum, emphasizing that laws of thermodynamics prohibit such evolution. This abiogenic theory was founded by Nikolai Alexandrovich Kudryavtsev a Russian petroleum geologist who stated that petroleum is formed from non-biological sources of hydrocarbons located deep in the Earth's crust and mantle. He also pointed out that oil pools in sedimentary strata are often related to fractures in the basement directly below. This is evidenced by the Ghawar supergiant oil field (Saudi Arabia); the Panhandle Field in Kansas (United States), which also produces helium; the Tengiz Field (Kazakhstan); the White Tiger Field (Vietnam); and innumerable others. He argued that no petroleum resembling the chemical composition of natural crudes has ever been made from plant material in the laboratory under conditions resembling those in nature. Nikolai suffered from political repressions during Stalin’s regime for his unorthodox thinking, spending several years in GULAG camps in the Transpolar European Russia as “enemy of the people”. After that, he was prohibited from living or staying in central cities of USSR.

Omar was different from many Libyans I had known so far. He did not smoke, did not like fizzy drinks and was a very careful driver. He spoke very little English and I knew only a few words of Arabic. Most of my needs were conveyed in a mixture of 80% english, 1% arabic and 19% gestures. Sometimes, due to the darkness in the jeep, and Omar concentrating on driving meant my gestures were not seen. Driving in desert, with tracks going in all directions, but the destination in view, means you make your own tracks, and that we did, when we arrived at the gates of Samah Oilfields main station at 10:30 pm, 11 December 2007.