Question: if u find lots of oil in the dessert why does that make u rich ?

Paul Roche answered on 25 Jun 2010:

Well, finding the oil doesn’t make you rich – owning the land that is under is where you start to make money, as you can sell it to an oil company (or make your own company to get the oil out). So countries like Saudi Arabia are extremely wealthy because they sit above some of the biggest oil fields in the world.

They then drill a well, extract the oil, refine it and sell it as petrol or diesel usually (or else to make plastic) – and they make a lot of money doing that. Iworked for the Shell Oil company as a summer student for 3 months, and it was amazing/scarey to see how much money they had.

As oil becomes rarer, people will take bigger and bigger risks to extract whatever they can – meaning disasters like the Gulf of Mexico might become more common.

So we need to find a way to stop being so reliant on oil and plastic – so drive less, recycle more, and develop technology like hydrogen fuel cells to power cars.