Petroleum Development Ltd (1 results)

Large folding lithographed map, ca. 450 x 770 mm. Major roads coloured, probably by hand, in red and blue. Bibliographically untraced, early corporate road map; not located in institutional collections, and with no known record of previous sales. - A practical working sheet for the Dukhan concession era, produced for Petroleum Development (Qatar) Ltd., then an associate company of the Iraq Petroleum Co. The map shows the Qatar Peninsula with a network of roads, including several "oiled" roads (picked out in red) converging on the west-coast Dukhan area where Qatar's first producing well (Dukhan No. 1, 1940) was drilled. "Graded tracks" are marked in blue. At Umm Sa'id (now Mesaieed) a "jetty" is indicated, with a "terminal" farther south, dating the map fairly precisely to 1949, when the oil terminal was established as the export outlet: the Dukhan oil wells are located on the opposite, west coast of the peninsula, along Salwa Bay, where coral reefs at the mouths of the bay prevented access by oceangoing tankers. The Umm Sa'id terminal would remain Qatar's only deepwater port for more than two decades. Additional oil wells are plotted (including one described as "in a cave"), suggesting compilation from field intelligence and day-to-day survey information. - Produced in the decade when operations resumed after the Second World War and culminated in first exports, such internal mapping belongs to the defining documentary residue of Qatar's shift from a pearling economy to a petroleum state. - A few small edge tears, mostly restored. Traces of folds; a couple of very small holes at fold intersections. Generally in fine condition. - Not in OCLC.