Ras Tanura

Ras Tanura (more accurately Ra's Tann?rah, Arabic: رأس تنورة meaning "top/head/cape of the skirt") is a city in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia located on a peninsula extending into the "Arabian" or 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 is 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.

Related Topics:
Eastern Province - Saudi Arabia - Persian Gulf - Oil - Saudi Aramco - Oil refinery

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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.

Related Topics:
Jubail - Dammam - Saudi Aramco - Offshore oil rigs and production facilities - Schlumberger - Halliburton

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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 administative 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 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.

Related Topics:
Saudi Aramco - Dhahran - Abqaiq - Udhailiyah

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