By Amy Mason Doan
Photographs by Charles Crowell/Black Star Photos

Thirty years ago, Saudi Arabia launched a project to build a city from the sand up. Today, Jubail is an industrial capital with a population of more than 100,000 that accounts for more than 7 percent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product. Wooden dhows have made way for container ships. A single pier has evolved into a bustling industrial port that serves 38 primary and secondary industries including oil refining, petrochemicals, and steel.

Jubail Industrial City, in fact, is the largest civil engineering project in the world today. It also is one of Bechtel’s most remarkable achievements—a megaproject that has required vast resources and logistical planning on an unprecedented scale. Bechtel has managed the project since it began, and last year, the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu asked the company to manage Jubail II, a $3.8 billion expansion of the city’s industrial and residential areas.

For a number of Bechtel people, Jubail has become a home away from home. “Some of my staff have been with the job since the beginning,” says Mike Candler, Bechtel’s current Jubail program manager. “There are some long personal as well as professional relationships here.”

A History of Teamwork

Those ties stretch back even farther than the 1970s. Stephen Bechtel Sr. became friends with Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud in 1943, when Bechtel worked on a Bahrain oil refinery. Bechtel then managed a string of projects in the Saudi kingdom, including the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, the Riyadh power plant, and the King Khalid International Airport.

In a 1973 meeting in Geneva, the Saudi royal family said that it was looking for ways to diversify the kingdom’s economy. Steve Sr. had noticed the massive amounts of natural gas going to waste during oil extraction in the Eastern Province. He suggested harnessing it for power generation, petrochemical feedstock, and other industries instead of flaring it off, and the royal family agreed.

The Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu was created in 1975 with Crown Prince Fahd as chairman. The Jubail Master Plan was adopted two years later, and the city has grown in size and economic importance ever since.

From the beginning, the Royal Commission thought big. Jubail Industrial City would be 102,000 hectares—10 times the area of the Panama Canal. The city now serves 17 primary industries, 21 secondary industries, and 132 support and light manufacturing industries. The industrial development required the world’s largest seawater cooling system, pumping more than 1 million cubic meters per hour.

Handling Everything

The industrial plants, power sources, utilities, commercial ports, and national airport were only part of the job. Bechtel planned and managed the construction of everything that makes Jubail a community, including neighborhoods with greenbelts, a hospital, schools, and mosques.

The sweltering coastal location served up challenges from the beginning. The work site, on the eastern shore of the Arabian Peninsula, had to be raised two meters, and salt corrosion made equipment maintenance tricky. The multinational workforce, which reached a peak of 50,000, battled humidity and temperatures that sometimes topped 50 degrees Celsius.

The first primary industry, a steel mill, came online in 1982. Today, refineries, petrochemical plants, and more than a dozen industrial plants produce everything from petroleum to plastics. As a result, Jubail has reduced the kingdom’s dependence on outside industries—one of the basic goals set out by the royal family in the early 1970s.

Jubail has also evolved into a major player in the global petrochemicals market, attracting top technical and business minds from 40 countries. Its residents attend two dozen schools, shop at 14 shopping centers, and play golf at the Whispering Sands course.

Jubail II will add a second industrial area to house up to 22 new primary industries. The project calls for the expansion of King Fahd Industrial Port, pipeline refurbishment, increasing capacity of the cooling system, and new desalination plants. The team will tailor plans to meet demand over the next 25 to 30 years.

Expanding in Phases

Jubail II will proceed in four phases, with the initial phase accommodating nine industries and covering 1,900 hectares of the total 5,500-hectare development. Designs for infrastructure facilities, including tunnels, superstructures, pipelines, and transport routes to the port were completed in 2004. The first phase will be complete by 2007 and the first industry may start production as early as 2008.

Most of the Jubail II plant buildings lie three kilometers west of the existing industrial park. The team is adhering to the original master plan, building in open space that was set aside 30 years ago. Residential areas will be added within the existing community to accommodate up to 50,000 additional residents by 2024.

The biggest technical challenge of Jubail II will be building around Saudi Aramco’s Kuwait Ras Tanura corridor, the main North-South pipeline for oil and gas. The open canal method for cooling process water that worked so well for Jubail I cannot be continued at Jubail II due to the new site’s elevation. So the plan calls for a network of four-meter- diameter pipelines with an initial flow of 200,000 cubic meters per hour.

One improvement over the early years is that today’s team will be able to hire more local contractors. “We have a much larger pool of experienced local contractors to rely on now,” says Candler. “We expect to build the project using almost entirely local help.”

The Royal Commission has also expanded its capabilities. The technology transfer program used successfully by Bechtel in Jubail has contributed to the development of an experienced project management organization with 283 people, including 103 Bechtel employees. The number of Bechtel staff is forecast to increase to 150 in 2005 to match the increase in work for Jubail II.

A High-tech City

Another dramatic change is in the city’s use of technology. The Royal Commission recently completed an information technology expansion, which brought broadband Internet access to most of the buildings in Jubail and added a new set of servers and other hardware. Jubail II will be high speed from the beginning.

As Jubail’s reputation as a modern industrial megaplex has grown, so has its academic prominence. Jubail Industrial College is considered one of the best universities in the kingdom, with a focus on engineering technology, business, and English. Jubail Technical Institute, which opened in September 2004, trains students as technicians in trades most needed by local industries. Within a few years, it will graduate welders and electricians who can choose to stay in Jubail after diploma day.

According to Prince Saud ibn Abdullah ibn Thunayyan, chairman of the Royal Commission, Jubail II will add at least 55,000 new jobs. Sounds like the new school has opened just in time.

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