As far as I know, the first oil rigs were in USA, but by the end of the last century the whole petroleum industry shifted to the Middle East. What caused this transformation to suddenly happen?
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>the whole petroleum industry shifted to the Middle East
No it didn’t. The US is the 1st production, Russia is 3rd, Canada is 4th, China is 6th, Brazil is 9th. The production of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE and Iran together are equivalent to the production of the US and Russia.
>How did oil/petroleum end up being prevalent in the Middle East?
Oil form when plankton and other marine microorganism die, drop the bottom of the ocean and then transformed over millions of year.
If you look at a map of the past (millions of years in the past) what is today the gulf of Mexico and the gulf of Arabia, but used to be large ocean. The oil that was forming in those ocean is now either in shallow depth (gulf of Arabia and Mexico) or at the surface (US and Middle East).
There is oil in a lot of places, but it’s only when it’s on land or relatively close to the shore that we can exploit is easily. So places that used to be Ocean, but closed into land masses are ideal position for rich oil reserve that are relatively easy to access.
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