For over eighty years, oil has been the asset of the Arab world which foreigners have coveted and which they have sought to control wherever and whenever they could.

Today, Arab oil faces a triple threat. First, the Arabs' political independence is being challenged by what is nothing less than a new American imperialism.

Second, oil producers in Russia, the Caspian, West Africa and Latin America are seeking to overturn the Arab dominance of oil supplies, and are actively competing for a bigger share of the rich American import market.

Third, just over the horizon, lies the real possibility of an inexhaustible source of renewable energy, based on hydrogen, which could doom oil to a slow death.

These are all potentially ruinous threats to the prosperity and way of life of the Middle East, yet there is little sign that the Arabs have woken up to the challenge and are preparing to face it.

The Americans invented the modern oil industry in the mid-19th century, but it was not until the World War I that demand for oil surged among all major industrial countries, triggering a corresponding sharp rise in world prices.

The British navy switched from coal to oil. The newly-invented motor car rapidly displaced the horse. Petrochemical industries flourished. The scramble for oil began in earnest in the 1920s when British, Dutch, French, and U.S. companies fought for concessions and divided the region between them.

Large quantities of oil were discovered close to Kirkuk in 1927 and an international consortium, the Iraq Petroleum Company, was formed to develop the fields.

In 1932, Standard Oil of California (Socal) struck oil in Bahrain, encouraging it the following year to sign an exploration agreement with King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, which gave it exploration rights over a large part of the Kingdom. It was not, however, until 1938 that American companies were rewarded with a major find at Dammam.

Today, Saudi Arabia with about 250 billion barrels controls 24 per cent of proven world oil reserves, while Iraq, much of whose territory remains unexplored, is thought to be not far behind with about 200 billion barrels of proven and probable reserves.

As in the 1920s, every major international oil company is today eager to get into Iraq and win a concession there. The military threat to Arab oil is the most immediate. The United States is itching to attack Iraq, overthrow its regime and gain control of its resources. Iraqi oil is the big prize everyone wants.

Washington, however, has been forced to pause – if only for the moment. It has met stiff resistance in the UN Security Council from three permanent members, France, Russia and China.

Equally troubling for Washington is the growing opposition in Britain to any attempt by Prime Minister Tony Blair to join President George W. Bush in armed aggression against Iraq. Without British support, the United States would find it difficult to attack.

But even in the United States, opinion is beginning to grasp that Bush's war may not be a picnic. The New York Times this week advised the Administration to demonstrate "its willingness to exhaust peaceful approaches before advocating war."

The administration, however, does not seem to be listening. The neo-conservative and pro-Israeli hawks who now dominate the American government are still pressing for war. They make no secret of the fact that their ambitions extend far beyond Iraq. They want to assert America's global hegemony, of which an essential element is control of the unique oil resources of the Arab Gulf.

If the U.S. managed to install a puppet government in Baghdad, American companies like ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco would get the lion's share of Iraqi oil concessions. American companies would also expect to secure the main reconstruction contracts in Iraq estimated to be worth between $100 billion and $200 billion.

Once America was the dominant power in Iraq, its political and economic control would inevitably extend from Iraq to Kuwait, to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and even perhaps to the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.

The hawks dream of forcing the oil price down to $10 a barrel so as to give a boost to the stagnant U.S. economy. Their greatest fear is that UN inspectors will give Iraq a clean bill of health, that sanctions will be lifted, that Saddam Hussein will survive, and that French companies like TotalFinaElf and Russian companies like Lukoil will win the big Iraqi oil concessions and cut the Americans out.

Total has been negotiating with Iraq for the giant Majnoon field near the Iranian border some 30 kilometres north of Basra, which is thought to contain between 10 and 30 billion barrels. But no firm contracts have yet been signed, pending a lifting of the UN sanctions.

Russia, in turn, is reported to have concluded a $40 billion economic agreement with Iraq, which would give Russian companies exploration rights in Iraq's western desert. Some 400 Iraqis are at present studying in Russian oil institutes.

But none of these arrangements and agreements are likely to survive if an American-sponsored regime came to power.

Ever since it became a net importer of oil in 1947, the United States has been obsessed by the need for "oil security". The key to security is a wide range of suppliers in different parts of the world.

Saudi Arabia is at present the main supplier of oil to the U.S. market, but even before the attacks of September 11 which caused relations to deteriorate, the U.S. had actively sought to diversify its sources of supply and reduce its dependence on Saudi oil.

This week, representatives of 100 American and Russian firms met in Houston, Texas, to discuss a new U.S.-Russian energy partnership. The Americans want access to Siberian oil and seem ready to provide the massive investment the Russians need.

The United States has also been paying increasing attention to West Africa, which has become a significant oil producer as a result of recent discoveries. It was no accident that last month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell paid visits to President Omar Bongo of Gabon and President José Eduardo Do Santos of Angola, two rising producers.

Much of West African oil lies near the coast or offshore beneath the Atlantic which makes it simpler and cheaper to transport to the United States than oil from the Gulf or the Caspian.

Industry sources say that America's long-term strategy is to weaken Opec's hold on the market by persuading countries to quit the cartel. Gabon quit in 1995 and Nigeria is said to be considering leaving. Oil analysts predict that a quarter of all new non-Gulf oil that comes on the world market over the next five years will come from sub-Saharan Africa.

Perhaps the most serious long-term threat to Arab oil lies in the industrial world's search for sources of renewable energy such as hydrogen to replace the present dependence on hydrocarbons.

Major European industrial companies and scientific institutes are spending large sums on research. The European Union has already set itself a target of 22 per cent of renewable energy for electricity generation by 2010 and 12 per cent for all energy uses.

General Motors has produced a revolutionary car which runs on hydrogen which, according to Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Washington-based Foundation on Economic Trends, marks "the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine and the passage from a civilisation based on oil to the age of hydrogen."

The world, he says, is entering the twilight of the great culture of fossil fuels, which began more than 300 years ago with the exploitation of coal mines and the steam engine.

What will the Arab world be like 40 or 50 years from now, when oil will almost certainly have been dethroned?