Front End

Jubail, the huge industrial city on the east coast of Saudi Arabia, is about to get even bigger.

Saudi City Spreading

A new contract has extended by 10 years Bechtel’s megaproject at the Saudi Arabian coastal city of Jubail. Over the past 30 years, the city has grown from a fishing village into one of the world’s largest industrial areas, based on a Saudi government master plan, with engineering and construction management by Bechtel. Today it stands beside some of civilization’s oldest cities—one of a new generation of modern metropolises in the Middle East—and sets the stage for an era of local growth and diversification.



Bechtel’s new $3.8 billion assignment will expand the city’s residential sections to accommodate 45,000 additional people—up from the current 100,000—and double its industrial zone. As many as 14 new primary industries will move into the zone, with downstream industries clustered nearby. The plan also calls for Bechtel to expand King Fahd Industrial Port, adding two new petrochemical quays and 19 more berths, and upgrade its commercial facilities.

Conservation Takes Flight

Mention conservation and the word “airport” may not pop to mind. Yet the two terms have come together for a smooth landing in Curaçao, where Bechtel designed and built a model of energy- and water-saving design at the Caribbean island state’s international terminal.

With mostly imported natural gas and oil to fuel power plants, and only two desalination facilities providing much of Curaçao’s fresh water, the high cost of scarce resources was an important factor in planning. Bechtel engineers and architects worked closely with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to design energy- and water-saving features. Among them are a natural ventilation system that uses Caribbean trade winds to cool the terminal, and a sewage system that reclaims wastewater for toilets, fire-fighting systems, and planters. Meanwhile, water-efficient landscaping reduces heat radiating from parking lots and roads and minimizes irrigation requirements.

Road to Independence

In keeping with the sustainable development goals of its Romanian Motorway project, Bechtel is helping residents of small towns along the 415-kilometer highway stimulate local business development and achieve greater self-determination.

Cooperating with the Civitas Foundation for Civil Society and with Microsoft, Bechtel has helped launch two com­munity “telecenters” in remote areas where many families and businesses have no telephone or Internet service.

The centers, at town halls in Savadisla and Mihai Viteazu, offer low-fee phone, fax, photocopying, word processing, e-mail, Internet, and business development services, such as Web site design, to help local businesses reach potential customers outside the area.

The telecenters have enjoyed a high level of acceptance in a short time, as users acquire new technology skills. At the same time, local leaders are applauding how the telecenters, by creating a gathering place, have rekindled participation in important community decisions, especially among young people.

Underground Economy

Concerns about global warming and climate change are leading power producers to consider new ways of reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from their fossil fuel-fired plants. While many Bechtel customers already employ advanced systems that generate less CO2, they’re also investigating technologies that capture the CO2 and put it to productive and profitable use.

One such technology is called CO2 capture and sequestration. In this cutting-edge process, CO2 is recovered from a power plant’s flue gas and injected into a nearby depleted oil field. The pressurized CO2 forces otherwise unrecoverable oil from the well, while the CO2 remains sequestrated underground.

Bechtel, working with a Canadian CO2 capture process licensor, has presented a plan to the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate to use CO2 captured from a 420-megawatt combined cycle power plant currently under construction for sequestration near an oil field in Kårstø, Norway. It would be the world’s first utility-sized CO2 capture plant of its kind.

Building a GREAT Workforce

Ever since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, contractors helping rebuild the region have faced a shortage of skilled labor. So Bechtel has joined with other companies, community colleges, labor organizations and government agencies to support an effort to recruit and train up to 20,000 new craft workers by the end of 2009.

The Business Roundtable initiative, called Gulf Rebuild: Education, Advancement and Training (GREAT), began in August with the launch of a targeted marketing campaign to encourage qualified candidates to sign up. Program participants receive training in entry level construction skills and basic safety at community colleges in Louisiana and Mississippi. Contractors work with GREAT to ensure that the trainees’ new skills will match the needs of the rebuilding effort. Many contractors, including Bechtel, have hired program graduates. GREAT plans to expand its efforts in the Gulf Coast region in 2007.

Global Positioning

For nearly three years, Bechtel has been building a liquefied natural gas plant in Equatorial Guinea for Marathon Oil. As the first process train was nearing completion last fall, Bechtel won a front-end engineering and design contract for a second, larger train at the facility, on Bioko Island off the west coast of Africa.

Despite its remote location, the project has ties to all corners of the world. Equipment and materials are sourced from 15 countries, and 38 nationalities are represented among the workforce. The project is part of a global trend: to condense vast gas deposits in far corners of the world for shipment to terminals in other countries, where it’s warmed back to gas to fuel power plants.

Bechtel is helping countries and companies better position themselves in this growing market with its fast-track design and construction capabilities. It’s a safe and economical way of meeting demand in a world thirsty for alternatives to oil and coal.


Back to top

Back to Departments