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Oman In Winter: Watching
The Oil Run Out

By Peter Goodchild

06 December, 2008
Countercurrents.org

The tourist brochures give the impression of a country leaping into the modern era, as if the Arabia Deserta of T.E. Lawrence were being transformed now, not by biplanes but by Toyotas. After three months here, admittedly not long, what I see is the reverse: that Oman, on the edge of the world’s largest oil fields, is not a “developing” country, but rather a declining one. Even making allowances for the fact that sloth is a sign of nobility, what is obvious is the pervasive inefficiency. I am reminded of Dmitry Orlov’s reference to the last years of the Soviet Union and the term “Dofenism,” “not giving a rat’s ass.” Chronic frustration, the inability to turn in any direction, leads to what is, at least to the observer, sheer apathy. As a foreign “laborer,” however, I know that increased heartbeat and adrenalin, and decreased body weight, can indicate something other than indifference.

Oman has oil reserves of about 5 billion barrels, although recoverable reserves may be more like 3 billion. In a world that uses 30 billion barrels a year, 3 billion is not much. What will happen when the oil is gone? I sometimes walk from my apartment on the north end of town to a deserted village of clay-brick houses. On my first visit I come upon two huge wells, from which the villagers once drew their water. They are neatly built, with four straight walls, but there is not a drop of water in them. There are also several aflaj, irrigation channels, running through that village from what must have been an uphill river or spring. There is no water in the aflaj, and this is December, the month when there is an occasional drop of rain. If there is no water in December, there will be none all year.

There are many such villages now deserted, because they have been replaced by buildings of concrete block, ugly structures with the acoustics of cells on death row. There are not many working aflaj of the traditional sort now, although they were once the pride of Oman, because the water table has dropped too far. Now the buildings in my part of town are supplied by water trucks, with heavy motors hammering the water into the apartments.

The big plan, however, is to replace all the localized systems of water delivery with three oil-fired desalination plants --- three for all of Oman. The pipes lie beside the highway, ready to be connected and buried. Desalination plants have a reputation for malfunctioning. If all three plants have trouble at the same time, there will be no delivery of water in the entire country. An even larger question, however, is: What will happen to these plants when the oil has disappeared? Without water, human life will not be possible.

With its oil wealth diminishing, Oman has vague plans to develop its economy in other directions. Everywhere one sees, as in so much else of the world, the malevolent aspects of American consumerism with none of the blessings of earlier American ideals. The entire country of Oman is filled with architectural monstrosities that must have Frank Lloyd Wright turning in his grave. Form has no relation to function, the form displays a fluidity that belongs to something between plastic and concrete, the function expresses merely a groveling for tourist dollars. If there is a spiritual grandfather of Omani architecture, it is Walt Disney. The sites for vast cities of tourist magnetism are staked out on the desert, although security guards in paramilitary uniforms allow no preliminary visits to these flatlands of gravel and dust. The questions are ominous. Where will the billions of dollars come from to build these tourist traps? Why would any but the most jaded tourist want to come to such places? And how will tourists reach these funlands when the fuel for the airplanes is no longer available?

This country must therefore be added to the long lists in Robert Kaplan’s essay “The Coming Anarchy,” or his book “The Ends of the Earth.” It is an Arabic counterpart to the familiar picture of the former Soviet countries of eastern Europe. Instead of vodka-swilling policemen in ill-fitting uniforms, parks strewn with garbage, apartment buildings devoid of straight lines, and cars held together with wire, tape, and old lumber, what one sees in Oman is the superficial opulence of shiny new Toyotas, the drivers pressing mobile phones to their ears. The twenty-first century has been badly pasted onto the tenth.

Listening to an arabesque version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” I wonder about the bullet of fate that led me here. In general the Omani are a people of physical grace and beauty, and half of my terror is that of the physically decadent among a race of warriors. The plumbing in my apartment is merely a collection of pipes that barely hangs onto the walls. Those who have the ability to repair anything have their chins in the air, because a sheik does no labor. I pay far more than I should for everything, since every gracious host takes a kickback. The extremely high death rate on the highways seems to bother nobody but myself, as I watch cars nosedive into each other in front of my own vehicle, another of the brand-new white Toyotas. Patience, patience, as they say on death row. I mustn’t take everything so seriously. “When the oil runs out,” says one of my students, “we’ll return to the traditional ways. We’ll go back to riding donkeys.”

Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. He is temporarily living in the Sultanate of Oman. He can be reached at [email protected].

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