In the 1970s, the Sultanate of Oman had the fewest paved roads in the world and was a closed-off economy. Today, it is one of the most progressive Arab states and a robust “late developing county” (LDC). How did Oman achieve such successful economic growth, and what role did Oman's oil deposits play in the development of its political institutions? The existing economics literature on rentier states argues that oil wealth is inversely related to political stability. However, the Sultanate of Oman has developed stable political and economic institutions in addition to having substantial oil deposits. The keys to understanding Oman's trajectory must go beyond a simple negative relationship between resources and political stability. I will explore this issue in two phases. In the first phase of my project, I will use a panel data regression analysis based on publicly available World Bank data to investigate how the economic impacts of oil discoveries and extraction vary as a function of quantifiable political indicators. This quantitative work will place Oman within the context of its peers. In the second phase of my project, I will turn to archival sources at Exeter University’s Arab World Documentation Unit, the India Office Records at the British Library, and the United Kingdom National Archives to document the specific institutional details in the co-evolution of oil and Oman's political economy during the past fifty years. This archival work will shed light on the particular details of Oman's development in the context of the quantitative findings from the first phase.