Oman is a country on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula, situated in West Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman, and Persian Gulf, between Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The coast of Oman was an important part in the Omani empire and sultanate.
The economy of Oman is mainly centered around its oil sector, with fishing and trading activities located around its coastal regions. When oil was discovered in 1964, the production and export increased significantly. The government has made plans to diversify away from oil under its privatization and Omanization policies. This has helped raise Oman's GDP per capita continuously in the past 50 years. It grew 339% in the 1960s, reaching a peak growth of 1,370% in the 1970s. Similar to the pricing of all other commodities, the price of oil is subject to significant fluctuations over time, especially those associated with the business cycle. A commodity's price will rise sharply when demand, like that for oil, outpaces supply; meanwhile, when supply outpaces demand, prices will fall.
The United Arab Emirates is situated in the Middle East and West Asia, bordering the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, between Oman and Saudi Arabia; it is at a strategic location along the northern approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit point for world crude oil. The UAE lies between 22°50′ and 26° north latitude and between 51° and 56°25′ east longitude. It shares a 19 km (12 mi) border with Qatar on the northwest, a 530 km (330 mi) border with Saudi Arabia on the west, south, and southeast, and a 450 km (280 mi) border with Oman on the southeast and northeast.
Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is the leading exploration and production company in the Sultanate of Oman. The Company delivers the majority of the country's crude oil production and natural gas supply. The company is owned by the Government of Oman, Royal Dutch Shell (34%), TotalEnergies (4%) and Partex (2%). The first economic oil find was made in 1962, and the first oil consignment was exported in 1967.
Ghalib bin Ali bin Hilal al-Hinai was the last elected imam (ruler) of the Imamate of Oman.
The Musandam Peninsula, locally known as Ruus Al Jibal, is a peninsula that forms the northeastern point of the Arabian Peninsula. It is located to the south of the Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. It is inhabited by the Shihuh tribe and is mainly governed by Oman as the Musandam Governorate with certain parts governed by the United Arab Emirates, including Ras Al Khaimah and parts of Dibba.
Jabal Hafeet is a mountain in the region of Tawam, on the border of the United Arab Emirates and Oman, which may be considered an outlier of the Hajar Mountains in Eastern Arabia. Due to its proximity to the main Hajar range, the mountain may be considered as being part of the Hajar range. To the north is the UAE city of Al Ain, in the Eastern Region of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the adjacent Omani town of Al-Buraimi.
The Dhofar War took place from 1963 to 1976 in the province of Dhofar against the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. The war began with the formation of the Dhofar Liberation Front, a Marxist group which aimed to create an independent state in Dhofar, free from the rule of the Omani Sultan Said bin Taimur. The rebels also held the broader goals of Arab nationalism which included ending British influence in the Persian Gulf region. Omani and British goals, on the other hand, were to safeguard Oman from communism and halt the spread of communist ideology as part of the broader Cold War.
Jabal Al-Mebraḥ, also known by the name Jabal Yibir, is a 1,527 m (5,010 ft) tall mountain in the Emirate of Fujairah, the U.A.E.
Duqm is a port town on the coastal strip of the Arabian Sea open to the Indian Ocean. It is about 550 km from Muscat. As of 2017, the population was approximately 12,000.
The Arabian leopard is the smallest leopard subspecies. It was described in 1830 and is native to the Arabian Peninsula, where it was widely distributed in rugged hilly and montane terrain until the late 1970s. Today, the population is severely fragmented and thought to decline continuously. Previously in 2008, an estimated 45–200 individuals in three isolated subpopulations were restricted to western Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen. However, as of 2023, it is estimated that 100–120 in total remains, with 70-84 mature individuals, in Oman and Yemen, and it is possibly extinct in Saudi Arabia. The current population trend is suspected to be decreasing.
Saudi Arabian oil was first discovered by the Americans in commercial quantities at Dammam oil well No. 7 in 1938 in what is now modern day Dhahran.
The Hajar Mountains are one of the highest mountain ranges in the Arabian Peninsula, shared between northern Oman and eastern United Arab Emirates. Also known as "Oman Mountains", they separate the low coastal plain of Oman from the high desert plateau, and lie 50–100 km (31–62 mi) inland from the Gulf of Oman.
A' Sunaynah is a Wilayah (Province) in Al Buraimi Governorate, northeastern Oman. The village contains a substantial area of greenery and is described "remote, even by Omani standards". A' Sunaynah is known for its traditional camel races as well as textile and weaving industries. The wilaya is reportedly occupied by the Al Nuaimi tribe; in the 1960s the tamimah of the Al Nuaim was reported to be 'Ali ibn Hamuda of the Al Bu Khuraiban division, who lived at Sunainah.
Solar thermal enhanced oil recovery is a form of thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a technique applied by oil producers to extract more oil from maturing oil fields. Solar EOR uses solar thermal arrays to concentrate the sun's energy to heat water and generate steam. The steam is injected into an oil reservoir to reduce the viscosity, or thin, heavy crude thus facilitating its flow to the surface. Thermal recovery processes, also known as steam injection, have traditionally burned natural gas to produce steam. Solar EOR is proving to be a viable alternative to gas-fired steam production for the oil industry. Solar EOR can generate the same quality steam as natural gas, reaching temperatures up to 750 °F (399 °C) and 2,500 PSI.
The Jebel Akhdar War, also known as the Jebel Akhdar Rebellion or the Oman War, broke out in 1954 and again in 1957 in Oman, as an effort by the local Omanis in the interior of Oman led by their elected Imam, Ghalib al-Hinai, to protect the Imamate of Oman from the occupation plans of Said bin Taimur, sultan of Muscat and Oman, backed by the British government, who were eager to gain access to the oil wells in the interior lands of Oman. Sultan Said received direct financing to raise an armed force to occupy the Imamate of Oman from Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), a consortium of oil companies that was majorly owned by what is known today as Royal Dutch Shell, Total, ExxonMobil and British Petroleum (BP); the latter was majority-owned by the British government.
Energy use in Oman was 381 TWh in 2020, almost double the consumption in 2010.
The wildlife of Oman is the flora and fauna of this country in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, with coasts on the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The climate is hot and dry, apart from the southeastern coast, and the country offers a variety of habitats for wildlife including mountains, valleys, deserts, coastal plains and sea coasts.
The geology of the United Arab Emirates includes very thick Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic marine and continental sedimentary rocks overlying deeply buried Precambrian. The region has extensive oil and gas resources and was deformed during the last several million years by more distant tectonic events.
