Abqaiq

Abqaiq (also Buqayq, Arabic: ???? buqayq, meaning "little bedbug") is a small city in the interior of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia located in the desert southwest of the Dhahran-Dammam-Khobar metropolitan area. Built in the 1940s by the national oil company Saudi Aramco, Abqaiq is predominantly an industrial oil-company town with a population of approximately 1,950 in 2005, about half of whom are North Americans.

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Abqaiq compound (Aramco code: AB) is one of four mainly expatriate residential compounds built by Saudi Aramco, including Dhahran (the main administative center), Ras Tanura (the main refinery and oil port), and Udhailiyah. It is located between the smaller company outpost of Udhailiyah to the south and larger Dhahran to the north.

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Similar to the other three, Abqaiq 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 mozaic 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.

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Dhahran: Dhahran (Arabic الظهران aẓ-Ẓahrān, meaning "the two backs") is a city in Saudi Arabia located in the country's Eastern Province not far from the Persian Gulf a short distance south of the larger port city of Dammam. Dhahran is, technicall...