Ras Tanura

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Image:Saudi dhahran rt abqaiq jubail.png Ras Tanura (more accurately Ra's Tannūrah, Arabic: رأس تنورة meaning "top/head of the barbeque spit") is a city in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia located on a peninsula extending into the Persian Gulf. The name Ras Tanura applies both to a gated Saudi Aramco employee compound (also referred to as "Najmah") and to an industrial area further out on the peninsula that serves as a major oil port and oil operations center for Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, and at one time was the largest oil refinery in the world. Before the rise of the oil industry in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, there was no town there. Today, the compound has about 3,200 residents, including about 1,700 North Americans.

Geograpically, the Ras Tanura complex is located a distance south of the modern industrial port city of Jubail (formerly a sleepy fishing village) and north across Tarut Bay from the old port city of (Al-)Dammam. Although Ras Tanura's port area is located on a small peninsula, due to modern oil tankers' need for deeper water, Saudi Aramco has built numerous artificial islands for easier docking. In addition, offshore oil rigs and production facilities have been constructed in the waters nearby, mostly by Saudi Aramco, Schlumberger, and Halliburton.

Ras Tanura/Najmah compound (Aramco code: RT) is one of four mainly expatriate residential compounds built by Saudi Aramco in the 1940s, including Dhahran (the main administrative center), Abqaiq, and Udhailiyah. Ras Tanura is the northernmost of the four and the only one located on the Gulf itself. Similar to the others, Ras Tanura compound is surrounded by a heavily guarded security fence, and only upper-level Saudi Aramco employees and their dependants may live inside. Built originally to allow expatriate oil company employees (mainly Americans) a degree of Western comfort and separation from the restrictions of Saudi and Islamic laws, the community today is a multi-ethnic mosaic of Americans, Saudis, other Arab nationalities (e.g. Egyptian and Jordanian), Indians, Pakistanis, etc. - all of whom continue to live in a predominantly American cultural bubble with English as the common language.

[edit] Ras Tanura in fiction

In the BBC docudrama, The Man Who Broke Britain, the price of oil increases dramatically after a terrorist attack against the oil refinery in Ras Tanura.

In the FX movie Oil Storm, the already damaged oil industry in the United States is further crippled by a terrorist attack at the same refining facility.

[edit] See also

Aramco expats - Saudi Aramco expatriate life inside and outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
SAR201: currently situated near Ras Tanura.
Ras Tanura Middle School
Dhahran
Abqaiq
Udhailiyah

[edit] External links

[1] Satellite image showing most parts of Ras Tanura: Aramco residential area, common city, and the huge oilfarms and oil seaport.
City-specific images and documents from the Aramco-Brats.com website
Aramco Services Company site: By clicking the "communities" link, information and photo tour can be found about Ras Tanura as well as other Aramco communities.
A billion barrels ago..., stories in the Ras Tanura refinery
Ports of Ras Tanura