In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a wealthy Englishman, went into the Iranian desert in search of oil. He finally discovered oil in 1908 and, one year later, founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The company found itself in need of financing and, just before WWI, it found a backer in Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty. The British government acquired controlling interest in the company and guaranteed itself a secure supply of oil.
In 1914 British and German oil companies went into partnership with the Turkish Petroleum Company which owned the oil rights to all of Mesopotamia (Iraq, Eastern Syria, Southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran). The industrial powers of Europe, fast becoming dependent on oil for growth and lacking domestic supplies, soon took absolute control over the Middle-Eastern oil fields. When WWI broke out the Anglo-German partnership was ended and the German-allied Ottoman empire found it's territories open to British attack. As the war was coming to a close, and Britain looked to it's future, the supply of oil became crucial. Sir Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the War Cabinet wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour that, " Control of these oil supplies becomes a first class war aim". Shortly afterwards the British forces entered Baghdad.
