The Middle East region, for the past eight decades has been actively engaged in the extraction of crude petroleum oil; where much of it were exported and the proceeds served as major foreign revenue earners. Even though the Middle East oil producing countries have embarked on local refining of crude oil, yet they found themselves as major importers of refined oil and petroleum products because of the sub-optimal performances of their refineries. The study is a qualitative. Document studies were adopted for generating data from mainly secondary sources. Documents scrutinized include academic journals, bulletins, textbooks and internet materials. The study has established that OPEC has slightly outperformed the Middle East in two vital areas of refining and output of petroleum products. The study has further established that the Middle East has outperformed OPEC in the areas of oil demand and crude oil imports. The inability of the Middle-East countries to leverage in the areas of refining and output of petroleum products to meet local consumption needs and of generating more employment and empowerment for citizens inform the motivation for this study.