Tankers
From Basrah to Ras Tanura, I share old photos of tankers and shipyards I collected from two magazines: Iraq Petroleum and Saudi Aramco.
Hello there, Noam here.
Happy holidays and time off. I hope you’re enjoying these times the way you want (including spending it with work you’re passionate about, or sleeping– especially if it makes you happier).
Before I start my post, I want to thank all the new subscribers to THE CHOKEPOINT- welcome aboard again. And to all my readers: thank you for staying out there. I have been silent for some time, but here I am with a new post and an agenda for the next few weeks.
Some of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed my recent work for The Washington Institute ( here and here) on disruptions to maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden due to attacks launched by Yemen’s Houthis, in addition to my work on the Iraqi Oil Tankers Company (IOTC) for Amwaj (here). The shipping industry is a field I have covered in my work over the past years, and even my first post for THE CHOKEPOINT was about The Cruel Ships. Today, I continue talking about ships but in a different way.
I share with you below some of my favorite photos of tankers and shipyards which I’ve found in old magazines and post cards I have collected. I focus on Iraq and Saudi Arabia as I continue to chase the history of their oil and gas industries.
In the next few weeks, I will cover the following stories which you won’t find elsewhere:
1- Japan in the Middle East: I will share with you soon an article from 1978 focusing on Takeo Fukuda who became the first Japanese prime minister to visit the Middle East in the late 1970s.
2- OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have recently engaged in a war of words over the issue of phasing out fossil fuels, and it heated up prior to the COP28 climate conference in Dubai. I will share an interview with the former executive director of the IEA, Ulf Lantzke, published in 1979 and in which he spoke about the transition phase for oil consumers (yes, 1979!). Stay tuned.
3- While I was busy in the past weeks tracking shipping diversions due to the attacks in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb, I was also keeping an eye on incidents involving substandard ships in the Mediterranean Sea. I will share details in an upcoming post.
Now it’s all about tankers - I hope you will enjoy the photos below (click to enlarge image). I leave you at the end with a painting by Balsam Abo Zour (don’t miss it!).
I now end my post by introducing you to Balsam Abo Zour, among my favorite painters ( I call them colors) and dearest friends. Below is one of her works (Title: Ripe Tomato In My Garden, Ah). As the viewer, I wanted to include it in today’s post because I saw in it a world below the seas and the tankers that sail the seas. You can visit Balsam’s website here.
That’s it for today. Have a good journey, and until the next post.