What are the results of the abundance of oil in the Arab World?

Answer 1

There is a great number of them, and some are of course a matter of opinion.

To mention a few: the development of modern Arab states on the peninsula started mostly in the Thirties of the last century, because of the growing importance and income of oil. Before about 1920-1930, a country like Saudi Arabia was dirt poor, the (literally) barefooted sheiks and their nomadic tribes living from breeding and trading camels and from income from pilgrims going to Mecca and Medina. The abundance of oil and its income have created a way and standard of living and a level of expenditure in many states on the Arab peninsula that can only be maintained as long as oil production and present price levels last. Another factor (and a recipe for possible collapse in the future when the oil income runs out) is that the abundant oil income allows the native Arabs to sit back and largely leave the real and hard work of building and maintaining their economic and physical infrastructure to hired temporary immigrants. The oil income by its abundance has moreover often discouraged incentives to develop other sizable and varied industries that might in time replace oil income.

Another result is the strategic importance of the Arabic peninsula for the Western countries that are dependent on its oil. It showed after 9/11, perpetrated mostly by Saudis sent by Al Qaeda which itself was led by a Saudi, when Saudi Arabia was carefully kept out of the US's retaliation targets.

Finally the oil income allows the Arab states to give generous financial support to groups of Islam 'warriors', like the ones that now are at each other's throats in Syria; and to numerous Islamic communities in the Western world, often at the price of them following a strictly orthodox version of Islam and members sometimes turning their backs on the Western societies in which they live .

On the plus side, it has brought wealth, modern living facilities, good medical care, free education etc. to the Arab peninsula, first of all to the several ruling families, but also to the Arabs at large who live there.