View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the greatest "if" in the Middle East after WWII?
(a) An uncertain future after Ibn Saud died
(b) The creation of a Jewish state
(c) The technology for a transcontinent pipeline
(d) The effects of a Russian invasion

2. Oil industry lore calls the war years what?
(a) The Stand in Arabia
(b) The Saudi Alamo
(c) Germany's Fury
(d) Time of the Hundred Men

3. Who set up the Eastern and General Syndicate to develop business opportunities in the Middle East?
(a) Thomas Neville
(b) Winston Churchill
(c) Frank Holmes
(d) Robert Nelson

4. What company did John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler start?
(a) Irving Oil Company
(b) Standard Oil Company
(c) Exxon Mobil, Inc.
(d) Citgo, Inc.

5. By 1879, Standard controlled what percentage of U.S. refining capacity, as well as the pipelines, gathering systems, and transportation?
(a) 10%
(b) 90%
(c) 25%
(d) 50%

6. In the early 1930s, the United States provided how much of Japan's oil imports?
(a) 16%
(b) 40%
(c) 90%
(d) 57%

7. What overcame Ibn Saud's reticence to allow infidel money into his kingdom?
(a) Churchill's influence
(b) His desire to expand into Egypt
(c) Financial problems
(d) Security worries

8. For producing nations, oil was a source of what?
(a) Pride
(b) Hardship
(c) Serenity
(d) Inequality

9. What was lacking in the mid-19th century in regard to oil?
(a) A belief in oil's uses
(b) A use for it
(c) The technology to convert oil to something usable
(d) An economical way to harvest it

10. Outside the U.S., oil exploration in the Western Hemisphere centered where?
(a) Chile
(b) Brazil
(c) Panama
(d) Mexico

11. What denied foreign interests access to drilling rights on public lands if their governments denied similar access to Americans?
(a) Foreign Oil Act of 1919
(b) Oil Drilling Act of 1922
(c) Oil Dependency Act of 1923
(d) Mineral Leasing Act of 1920

12. Between 1911 and 1918, oil consumption rose how much in the United States?
(a) 5%
(b) 90%
(c) 30%
(d) 55%

13. Who toured the Middle East and believed it to be "the greatest prize in history" because of its oil?
(a) Everette Lee DeGolyer
(b) James Forrestal
(c) FDR
(d) David McNaughton

14. Shell employees at Balikapan in Borneo reacted to Pearl Harbor how?
(a) They slowed production, hid oil supplies, and built bunkers for themselves.
(b) They stopped production, sabotaged wells, and set wharves ablaze.
(c) They stepped up production and prepared to expand the operation.
(d) They increased production, drilled new wells, and exported oil to the U.S.

15. Which other country provided oil for Japan in the early 1930s?
(a) Dutch East Indies
(b) Britain
(c) Mexico
(d) South Africa

Short Answer Questions

1. Who became Britain's chief oil supplier just before WWI?

2. Britain wanted to keep whose oil out of the hands of the Russians and French in the early 1900s?

3. In 1947, the Interior Department started a program to stockpile how many barrels of oil each day?

4. Early in 1942, Hitler developed which plan, aimed at the Caucasus and beyond, to the oil fields of Iran and Iraq, and onward to India?

5. Japan believed that what was the biggest liability for Germans in WWI, leading to their defeat?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 485 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample