<P> Meanwhile Ibn Saud had dispatched American mining engineer Karl Twitchell to examine eastern Arabia . Twitchell found encouraging signs of oil, asphalt seeps in the vicinity of Qatif, but advised the king to await the outcome of the Bahrain No. 1 well before inviting bids for a concession for al - Hasa . To the American engineers working in Bahrain, standing on the Jebel Dukhan and gazing across a twenty - mile (32 km) stretch of the Persian Gulf at the Arabian Peninsula in the clear light of early morning, the outline of the low Dhahran hills in the distance were an obvious oil prospect . </P> <P> On 31 May 1932, the SOCAL subsidiary, the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) struck oil on Bahrain . The discovery brought fresh impetus to the search for oil on the Arabian peninsula . </P> <P> Negotiations for an oil concession for al - Hasa province opened at Jeddah in March, 1933 . Twitchell attended with lawyer Lloyd Hamilton on behalf of SOCAL . The Iraq Petroleum Company represented by Stephen Longrigg competed in the bidding but SOCAL was granted the concession on 23 May 1933 . Under the agreement, SOCAL was given "exploration rights to some 930,000 square kilometers of land for 60 years". Soon after the agreement, geologists arrived in al - Hasa and the search for oil was underway . </P> <P> SOCAL set up a subsidiary company, the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC) to develop the oil concession . SOCAL also joined forces with the Texas Oil Company when together they formed CALTEX in 1936 to take advantage of the latter's formidable marketing network in Africa and Asia . </P>

Where has oil been found in the middle east