In this book, Dr. Almulhim addresses the legal and political aspects of natural resources exploitation under the system of concessions. His aim is to analyze the effectiveness of this system in developing the Middle Eastern oil industry, and determine to what extent the system has affected values distribution among the grantors and concessionaires. He believes that the great human values derived from the exploitation of oil—such as wealth, power, well-being, skill, enlightenment, respect, affection, and rectitude—should be redistributed among all the participants in the oil business. The author has managed to draw together the diverse threads of Middle Eastern mining law as they have emerged this century, comparing these to the traditional tenets of Islamic law.
The author provides a final appraisal of the effectiveness of system of concessions in the early development of the Middle East petroleum industry and examines the consequences for the distribution of the technical skills, the wealth, and the power arising from the extraction and sale of oil.
