The family celebrated the wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Dr. Ata Ur Rehman. The small gathering, as tradition, dined out in a sophisticated manner with the only guest being Engr. Iqbal Ahmed Khan, the father of Dr. Kiran Ata Ur Rehman and Vice President of Saudi Aramco Ex-Employees Association (SAEEA).
Just down the road outside Dhahran’s Main Gate in the 1950s and 60s was an area called Saudi Camp. In one of the shops was an old, blind Saudi cobbler who made sandals from camel hide and tire treads. He would trace your foot on a piece of cardboard and tell you to come back the next day to pick up your custom-made sandals.
Looking out at the white sands and glistening waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Arailym Mergenova remembers as a child peering westward from Aktau, Kazakhstan, to the Caspian Sea disappearing over the horizon.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Carina Rourke Burns, an American published author and expatriate who spent seven years of her life growing up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before relocating to Paris in 1975.
Batten down the hatches! It was always a happy yet tense time for Aramco when the high school and college dependents returned for Christmas and summer vacations. The company worked hard to keep them entertained (Tri-D dances, dhow trips, etc.)
We are happy to confirm that Not the May Ball 3 will be held on September 3, 2022 at the Novotel Hotel London West in Hammersmith, London. This Event continues the tradition of the Dhahran Rugby Union Football Club (DRUFC) May Ball, one of the highlights of the Dhahran and AEA annual social calendar.
As Dr. Seuss might say, “Oh the places we’ll go!” Just see what awaits us on our 2022 Hafla cruise. . . Our cruise experience is much more than that photo op as we eagerly embark on the Celebrity Summit. We begin and end our Hafla in ‘The Magic City, as Miami is nicknamed, and then two exciting Caribbean destinations await our arrival.
Not quite 4,000 days before the Cairo crash, I could be found in Glenshaw, a suburb outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the day after Christmas, 1955. My father had joined giant Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company) thirteen months before, and we would soon be with him in KSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Back in 2015, the Dhahran Cricket Association (DCA) explored another out-of-kingdom destination on a 5-day tour of Morocco. See photos from the excursion enjoyed by 60 DCA members and family recounted here by Farooq Khan.
The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) celebrates Saudi Founding Day (Tuesday, Feb. 22) through Feb. 26 by taking visitors on a journey to the Kingdom’s beginnings when three centuries ago its foundations were laid in the hills of Najd with the pillars of a state that thrives to this day.
Saudi Arabian Oil Company (“Aramco”) and an international investor consortium, led by affiliates of BlackRock and Hassana, announced today the successful closing of the lease and leaseback deal previously announced on December 6, 2021. The consortium has acquired 49% stake in Aramco Gas Pipelines Company, a subsidiary of Aramco, for $15.5 billion. The consortium comprises leading institutional investors including, amongst others, Keppel Infrastructure Trust, Silk Road Fund, and China Merchants Capital.
Amidst two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, PCR testing, isolation, face-mask-wearing and social distancing have now become the new way of traveling in 2022. Just like that, we went on our first backpacking trip this year to Turkey for 10 days. Our life's goal is to witness, experience and explore the world, in which case this was the first of our “Adventures of Samia and Taha” that we would like to share.
“The Garden of Africa” (detail) is both the title of this etching, shown in full below, and the name of the cemetery in Zarzis, Tunisia, where the gate, below, requires visitors to stoop in a gesture of respect for the deceased within.
I was delighted recently to be invited by the Zay Initiative to discuss traditional Middle Eastern jewellery as part of their 2022 Speaker Series. The Zay is a UK registered non-profit organization devoted to the Art of Arab dress.
One of my husband’s first shopping experiences was in downtown Al Rahima, a small town near the Ras Tanura compound. He was looking for an electrical appliance and found that he had to walk around a rather large crowd of Saudis who were watching a TV set in the window of the store.
One of the objectives of the increasingly outward-looking nation of Saudi Arabia, set out in the ambitious Vision 2030 document and its plan to create a more diverse and sustainable economy, is to open up the Kingdom to visitors as a destination for heritage tourism.
In this piece, Mark Lowey shares a touching tribute to Quriyan Al Hajri as told by Quriyan’s longtime friend and Aramco colleague, Richard Moffitt. Mark met Quriyan in 2013 when their chance encounter led Mark to reunite with the long-lost Bedouin families whom he had first met in 1978.
While the world did slow down in 2021, the interesting tales and photos from Aramco ExPats didn't. View this collection of community favorites from 2021.
Petroleum Engineering Specialist Farooq A. Khan, who retired from Aramco in January 2021, recalls a remarkable trip to Sri Lanka he enjoyed as president of the Dhahran Cricket Association (DCA) in 2018. The following report captures the memorable time that was had by 69 DCA members and their families who journeyed on a beautiful 5-day excursion.
The Aramco Journal of Technology is published quarterly by the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to provide the company’s scientific and engineering communities a forum for the exchange of ideas through the presentation of technical information aimed at advancing knowledge in the hydrocarbon industry.