Iván Jesús González
Braden Orso
World Geography I H – 3
16 February 2011
Oil and Water Essay
Southwest Asia gets over a trillion dollars of revenue from selling oil. But water is very scarce in
this area which causes major social, economic, and political problems. So the question of which of their
most important natural resources, oil and water, should they invest these revenues in is still at hand.
Water is a necessity, while oil is a commodity. But you can’t extract oil to sell to other countries if you
have workers dying of thirst while you’re at it. So I think Southwest Asia should invest their money in
saving and obtaining water so that they can later invest more in oil extraction and trade.
The problem of obtaining water for Southwest Asian countries is essential in keeping themselves
alive as a country. With more water, less people will die of thirst and will be able to work longer and
harder which benefits the country socially and economically. And with a better economy, the country
develops faster and becomes stronger politically.
A strategic commodity is a resource so important that nations will go to war to ensure its steady
supply. Water and Oil are strategic commodities and nations have and will continue to go to war to
obtain it, especially in Southwest Asia.
Water has a huge impact on oil-producing countries and oil-consuming countries. When oilproducing countries have enough water for their population, then they are better at extracting oil and
exporting it. But without water, they don’t extract oil well and don’t export as much as they would if
they had more water. This affects oil-consuming countries because the amount of oil they consume
depends on the amount of oil that is extracted and exported to them. If an oil-producing country
doesn’t have enough water for their country to extract oil, than oil-consuming countries have no oil to
buy from them which makes their economy goes down. If oil-producing countries have enough water to
extract oil and export it to oil-consuming countries than the oil-consuming and producing countries’
economies rise.
Water is the need of every country in the world. But it is even more needed in Southwest Asia
where the land is mostly desert. Without water, oil-producing countries cannot extract oil to export to
oil-consuming countries. So these countries have conflicts and have gone to war with each other for the
use of water. If these trends continue, Southwest Asia will destroy itself in wars and conflicts, people will
die of thirst, and countries will lose massive amounts of oil imports. What needs to be done is a trade
agreement with these Southwest Asian nations. They give us oil, we give them water, in exchange for
more oil production (wink, wink ;D).