It’s well known that when it comes to oil, the Middle East is king. Saudi Arabia has more than 260 billion barrels of proven reserves. Iran has 136 billion. Iraq and Kuwait together nearly 120 billion. Combined, Middle Eastern reserves account for about forty percent of the world’s known oil. Which is odd, because the fossils that make up fossil fuels come mainly from ancient microscopic organisms that sank to the bottom of the ocean. Those on the bottom of the pile were pushed down into the earth’s crust and slowly cooked into crude.