Kumbu Nije, 13, removes freshly harvested groundnuts—peanuts—from a basket. With 110 women members working 23 hectares, the Banjulunding Women's Garden is one of dozens of such collectives across the African continent's smallest country.
On June 15-21, 2022, a group of 28 Aramco retirees and friends embarked on a week-long whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. The trip was organized through Grand Canyon Whitewater out of Flagstaff, AZ, and it included 7 days and 6 nights on the beautiful Colorado River in northern Arizona.
When my grandparents Mary Garvin and William A. (Bill) Eddy were living in Jidda, Saudi Arabia (1943-1947), they acquired several wooden chests decorated with brass sheeting and studs. Produced in India for hundreds of years, these containers were popular with Arab traders around the Indian Ocean and as far east as China.
Here are some interesting headlines over the past 70 years. Crude oil production and refinery runs in Saudi Arabia last year established new all-time highs, F.A. Davies, chairman of Aramco, revealed. In a report of operations for 1951 to the royal Saudi government, the Aramco chairman said developments last year "continued to advance Saudi Arabia in importance in the international petroleum trade.”
In Saudi Arabia’s northern corner, Aramco has ended routine flaring for the mammoth 5.1 billion standard cubic feet (scf) of high-pressure natural gas produced each day from three of the company’s nonassociated gas reservoirs.
Aramco is honored once again to receive the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE) International Industry Appreciation Award for 2022. Aramco’s resilience and agility has built one of the world’s largest integrated energy and chemicals companies. Saudi Aramco is part of the global effort toward building a low carbon economy.
Coal remains the largest and one of the cheapest energy sources in the world today. It fulfills 40% of the world’s energy requirement, generating 2 million MW of electricity. It is the majory energy provider for most of the industrial nations of the world, with the US generating 30% (232,772 MW) of its electricity through coal, China 68% (1,046,893 MW) and India 73.5% (233,077 MW).
While the visits back to Dhahran during my school breaks were temporary, the joy of comfort foods I enjoyed at the local spots in Dhahran was permanent — never could I forget the taste of my favorite Chicken Tikka Masala from Olive Garden-Tandoori House, and I still, to this day, seek that same taste whenever I order the dish at different restaurants.
Golf was the love of many Americans and it was no surprise to find that in Dhahran as well as some of the other larger Aramco communities, this sport had been catered for in some rudimentary fashion since the early days. Over the decades, the standard of the courses had gradually improved and areas of hitherto barren sand had undergone a remarkable degree of landscaping…… they were however still sand.
I first learned of Harrat Khaybar after reading a report about the discovery of Mustatil’s in the northwest region of Saudi Arabia. Harrat Khaybar, literally the “volcanic fields of Khaybar” (and named so because of its vicinity to the city of Khaybar), is a volcanic field located about 150 km from the Holy City of Madinah.
Here are some headlines from the past eight decades of The Arabian Sun (and its predecessor, The Dust Rag.) From the aspirations cast upon us because of the title "Dust Rag." Perhaps we were too hasty in naming our paper. What do you think? Shall we change the name? Please give us your honest criticism and suggest a title you feel should be used.
Back in 2017, we ran a series of articles featuring decorative hardhats that some Aramcons have been fortunate to count among their possessions. Recently, we received additional photographs from someone who obtained the hardhat in a storage auction purchase.
AramcoWorld, Saudi Aramco's flagship publication, is widely recognized as a leading source of nonpolitical coverage of the history, geography, arts and cultures of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, with an emphasis on the interweavings of the plural cultures of East and West, past and present.
For more than eight hours, we navigated the Sekonyer River in a wooden boat, cruising through Tanjung Puting National Park in the Central Kalimantan region of Borneo, Indonesia. After docking, we walked about an hour in the lush rainforest. Then, our tour guide and ranger, Adut, placed corn and yams on top of a wooden table.
In this piece, Mark Lowey, known as “Abu Jack” (father of Jack) to his Saudi friends, is escorted deep into the Rub Al Khali (the Empty Quarter) to meet, for the first time, the son of an old acquaintance. Before first light there was a slight chill in the air, and the men gathered around the cooking fire. Coffee and tea were served, and conversation ensued. Inevitably the discussion turned to the herd.
Longtime Aramcon Tim Hansen has rolled into retirement with gusto, having recently completed a bike trip across America from California to Florida. The 3,100-mile trip took 52 days to complete, with 45 days of actual biking. It started in San Diego, California, on the West Coast, and ended in St. Augustine, Florida, on the East Coast.
Today (July 5), Aramco announced a major expansion of its Namaat industrial investment programs, with 55 agreements and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) across the sustainability, digital, industrial, manufacturing, and social innovation sectors.
One of the many benefits of working for Aramco in the diving sense at least, was that we could freely use company aircraft to fly across the country to the Red Sea coast at Yanbu which, similar to the town of Jubail on the Gulf coast, had been transformed from a quiet fishing village into an industrial city with a deepwater port.
Arabic classes for the new year, celebrating production records and drilling competition champions, a hiatus in the weekly publications, as well as the Feel the Burn event are highlighted in this week’s trip down Memory Lane.
Fionn Scott, grandson of Irene and Brian Dean who lived in Ras Tanura from 1978-1987 and 1991-2001, graduated from Holy Rosary High School in Lloydminster, Canada on Friday, June 24, 2022 and received a scholarship to attend Lakeland College. His mother, Paula Scott (Dean), resided in Ras Tanura from 1978 to 1987.