Oil Geography and Regional Economies

The Middle East holds the largest proven conventional oil reserves of any world region, concentrated overwhelmingly around the Persian Gulf: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates together account for a large majority of the region's reserves, with Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field, discovered in 1948 and still producing, widely regarded as the largest conventional oil field ever found. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, was founded in Baghdad in September 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, explicitly to coordinate member states' production policy and negotiate collectively with the Western oil majors that had previously set prices unilaterally; OPEC later expanded to include other Gulf and African and Latin American producers, and in 2016 formed the broader OPEC+ coalition with Russia and other non-member producers to coordinate output more widely.