Made on Earth Read Free

like the United Arab Emirates, have vast supplies of fossil fuels such as petroleum.
     
    11 August 2005
    Back to the 11 August 2005. The petroleum has been found, drilled for, and pumped out of the ground. Several oil tankers have moored close to the oil platform off the coast of Dubai to collect the oil, including the 187 metre long Madras . However, the petroleum is not immediately pumped into the waiting tankers, but runs through a pipeline on the seabed to a storage container on land. At this stage the thick black liquid is a mixture of oil, gas, saltwater and other impurities. It is not yet ready to be transported and sold as it contains too many extra worthless materials.
    Once on land, the mixture is moved to a container to be pressurised. The natural gas is extracted and filtered off, which is then used to run Dubai’s huge power stations. In another tank the heavy saltwater sinks to the bottom and is pumped away. Using heat, electricity and chemical reactions, the remainder of the water and other waste products are removed. The resulting pure crude oil is now ready to be transported by tankers or through pipelines.
    Most tankers drop anchor off-shore while they are waiting for an oil pick-up. The wait can last for several weeks, however the Madras only has to wait for 72 hours. In the mornings and evenings when the air is cooler, Captain van der Valt stands on the bridge of the Madras watching the coastline through his binoculars for hours on end. Every time he sails to Dubai, he feels like he’s arrived on the set of a science-fiction film. The top floors of the skyscrapers glow blue and look like giant, alien heads. Other constructions look like docking stations for missiles, although in reality they are brightly lit building sites surrounded by cranes, the birthplaces of future skyscrapers.
     
    14 August 2005
    The opportunity for the Madras to dock in the Jebel Ali Port comes at sunrise. Dubai’s new harbour, which was created to cater to huge cargo ships, is the largest port in the Middle East. Due to the enormous size of oil tankers however, oil shipments have to be exchanged outside of the main harbour. At about 8:00am in the morning the Madras enters the filling station. Three massive hoses are lowered by crane onto the deck of the ship and positioned so that the crude oil can be pumped into the ship’s storage tanks. It takes well over a day for the tanker to be filled.
    While this is happening, Sadek, an immigrant from India, is finishing breakfast with his housemates in a simple apartment on the outskirts of Dubai. Sadek and his friends are part of the foreign workforce that make up more than three quarters of Dubai’s population, and who undertake almost all of the manual labour in the city. Immigrants like Sadek work on oil rigs and on building sites, they cook and wait on tables in restaurants, and they work in the homes of some of the wealthiest people in Dubai. They take care of private and public gardens, clean the streets and drive taxis. These workers earn around £100 to £120 pounds a month. They send most of this money home to their families, who must survive on this source of income alone. Immigrant workers can often earn more than double the wages they could in their homeland working as skyscraper construction managers, vets on camel farms or engineers on the drilling platforms.
    Sadek, however, earns his money by loading and unloading small boats in the old port. The old port is situated in an estuary that extends almost ten kilometres into the heart of Dubai. The estuary has served as a natural harbour for centuries, and throughout this time the dhows, the traditional wooden boats of the Arabian Gulf, have anchored here. Forty years ago Dubai was just a small trading post. Only a few of the houses were made of stone, and most were built from clay and had roofs made of palm fronds. Although the town has changed completely in the last few decades, the dhows still transport almost all