Abqaiq

Map of Abqaiq Region

Abqaiq (also Buqayq, Arabic: بقيق buqayq, meaning "father of the sand flies") 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.

Contents

1 Role in Oil Processing
2 Community and Region
3 Climate
4 In the Media
5 See also
6 External links

Role in Oil Processing

After the oil well products (oil, natural gas, water, sand, etc.) are processed by the GOSP's (Gas Oil Separation Plants), the sour oil (containing H2S, hydrogen sulphide) is sent by pipeline to Abqaiq. The Abqaiq site sweetens the oil, then pumps it to Ras Tanura (where it is exported), or further refined at a domestic refinery. Abqaiq also has NGL (Natural Gas Liquids) plants that extract natural gas liquids (butane, propane, hexane, etc.) from the oil. These NGL's are sweetened by Abqaiq, then sent to other sites for further separation and purification.

Community and Region

The Abqaiq resident's 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.

Similar to the other three, Abqaiq compound is surrounded by a heavily guarded security fence, and only upper-level Saudi Aramco employees and their dependents 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. Abqaiq is famous for its 18 hole golf course with the oiled-sand fairways and sand "greens", now the one of its kind since Dhahran's own golf course was converted to grass starting 2003.

Climate

Abqaiq's weather is 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) on winter nights to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) in summer daytime. On rare occasions, Abqaiq has reached freezing temperatures during the winter. There are only a few inches of rain each year. Dust storms are a regular occurrence.

In the Media

Abqaiq was the site of a terrorist attack attempt by Al Qaeda on February 24th, 2006 to attack the oil processing facility. [link]

A moderate to severe attack on Abqaiq would slow production from an average of 6.8 million barrels a day to 1 million barrels. As mentioned earlier, the chief purpose of Abqaiq is to remove hydrogen sulfide from crude oil and reduce the vapor pressure, making the crude safe to be shipped in tankers. Abqaiq's is the world's largest facility for this stabilization. [link]

External links

[Aramco Services] - Photo tour and info about Abqaiq (and other Aramco communities) under "communities" link

[Aramco-Brats.com - Abqaiq] - City-specific images and documents

[Satellite Image from Terraserver.com]

Saudi Arabian City

List of main Saudi Arabian cities