Saudi Arabia celebrates 75 years of oil

By Souhail Karam

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Conservative Saudi Arabia cut loose for one night with bright lights and loud music to celebrate 75 years of the oil era, which has turned a backward desert kingdom into a super-rich power.

King Abdullah watched dancing children and listened to actors and government executives narrating how oil transformed the desert and predicted it would do so for another 75 years.

Now the world's top oil exporter, the Gulf Arab state provides over a tenth of oil supplies and is raking in windfall revenues as prices reach new highs. U.S. crude hit a fresh record of $130 a barrel on Wednesday.

"Oil made us leap to the 21st century from a way of life reminiscent of the 15th century," one royal told Reuters at the celebrations.

The festivities were held in a purpose-built dome raised around the well that first tapped commercial quantities of Saudi oil, now called the "prosperity well".

On display was the original copy of the first oil concession Riyadh signed with U.S. firm Standard Oil of California in 1933, heralding a search that had prolific results. The kingdom holds a fifth of global oil reserves.

Since then, oil has been at the centre of a web of diplomatic, economic, political and security interests that bind Saudi Arabia to the United States.

Just last week, U.S. President George W. Bush visited Riyadh to ask it to pump more oil to ease the economic impact of record prices on the world's largest energy consumer. Saudi Arabia made just a modest output increase, with little impact on prices.