By Roland Francis To a job-seeking Goan, working for Aramco was to know that you were made for life. You lived in a camp in the desert but this camp was built on the lines of a small American city. Neatly lined and shaded streets and boulevards with small single storied homes that had tidy gardens in front. There was separation of course, but it was not of the segregated level. There was the American section and the Asian and Arab. Unlike the rest of Saudi Arabia, alcohol flowed freely for non Muslims within the camp, the rules being enforced by Saudi security who were Aramco employees, nominally under the tutelage of the Saudi authorities but with operational supervision of the Americans.
Any Goan retiring from Aramco stood out from other Goa-returning expats. His house was bigger and flashier, his cars far more expensive and everything about his standard of living smelled of money. After all the average Goan Aramco employee during his working life, took home about five times that of any other non-Aramco Goan in any part of the Persian Gulf. They were in many positions in the company - from Tool Pushers and Engineers on drilling rigs to accounting and administration positions in the offices and labour camps and to support staff in the medical clinics, schools and the instrumentation control rooms of Aramco's refining subsidiaries. The story of how Americans gained control of Saudi Arabia is an interesting but unsubstantiated story. You must remember that in the days we are talking about, the British had almost total control of the Persian Gulf. Ibn Saud was generally impoverished and his country's economy was dependent on the revenues of the Hajj, export of dates, subsistence farming in the small areas of the oases and the trading of goods carried to neighboring countries on camelback. Therefore he was only too happy when a few American exploration companies offered to look for the prospect on oil in the kingdom on a contingency basis; that is, they would take a small proportion of any possible future oil for a limited time, to pay for their expenses and profit. They found what they were looking for in the Eastern part of the country. The British lost no time in rushing in. To tempt the hardscrabble Saudi monarch who was nothing but a warrior desert nomad, they brought in a right hand drive Rolls Royce. On the inaugural drive, the king had to sit on the left of the British driver and it was a terrible insult to him. Then the Americans came in with a copycat show but with a left hand drive Cadillac. The king was highly pleased with the seating position and the comfort of the American made car. In addition, the Americans gave him a small suede pouch of gold coins. The British were too miserly to have done this, or in their imperial pride, they did not see fit to give a desert king any more than a fine car for his oil rights. To a nomad-king, being seated to the left of a subordinate is a big insult in his tradition. The Americans of course got the rights. This is in context of the news that Aramco is now being considered for public sale. The oil company and its downstream facilities - refining, petrochemical gas plants and the like, are valued at about 10 trillion dollars. There is speculation about how much of the pie is actually going to be sold. How the Goans working there will be affected, no one knows. The good days for them, as they say, are drawing to an end. Forwarded by Eddie Fernandes
