Saudi Aramco: A Legacy of Delivering Energy to the World

Photographer: Donald M. Mcleod

The D.G. Scofield leaves Ras Tanura with Saudi Arabia’s first export of oil in May 1939. The two owners of Casoc, Socal and the Texas Co., divided the shipment, with Socal’s portion of the crude oil sent to its refinery in Richmond and the Texas Co.’s portion shipped to the Bect’ames Refinery in France.
 

Photographer: R.Y. Richie

A Saudi employee of Aramco conducts a visual inspection as he walks along a section of the Dhahran-Abqaiq pipeline in the summer of 1946. There were no roads across the sands to Abqaiq, and transportation of personnel and supplies was difficult. According to the thermometer in the foreground, the temperature hovered around 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) on the day of this photo.
 
A 640-kilometer (400 mile) pipeline, shown under construction in 1997, carries premium Arabian Extra Light crude oil from the Shaybah oil field in the Rub‘ al-Khali to Abqaiq. There, it is stabilized and blended with other Arabian Extra Light production, and sent on for export from terminals at Ras Tanura or Ju‘aymah on the Gulf.
 
The loading and unloading of tankers, the production and distribution of crude oil, gas and refined products and the production of electrical power – all are managed from the Operations Coordination Center (OCC) and viewed on the video wall, the largest in the industry. Twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, OCC personnel monitor company operations using real-time computers systems connected through an extensive communications network to all the company’s plants, terminal and pipelines.
 
A supertanker several football fields long moves into mooring position at Ras Tanura’s Sea Island terminal. Saudi Aramco’s terminals on both coasts of the Kingdom load more than 9,000 tankers annually – millions of barrels of oil per day – for consumers around the globe.
 

Photographer: Owen Oxley

The Leo Star is just one of 23 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) in the fleet of Vela International Marine, Ltd., Saudi Aramco’s shipping subsidiary. One of four double-hauled VLCCs delivered to Vela in 2002-2003, the Leo Star, a 317,000-ton deadweight tanker, was build by Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, Korea.