Chinese Petrodollars and the Competition for Oil

Abstract

In March 1937, an American geologist, Max Steinke, made a fateful trip across Saudi Arabia. He was part of an exploratory team working for the Standard Oil Company of California. Steinke and his colleagues had established a base camp in the eastern coastal city of Dhahran. Their American wives later arrived on the boat from Bombay. It was a harsh assignment. The team lived in two-bedroom portables. There wasn’t a tree in sight. Summer temperatures reached upward of 130 degrees. Two Chinese cooks, Chow Lee and Frank Dang, served up a steady diet of fried noodles and bread. But for the geologists, at least, there was the reward of exploring the vast and still untamed Arabian Peninsula. And so in March that year the exploratory team set off in a convoy of two sedans and three pickups. An American journalist, Wallace Stegner, later recorded the events.¹