2022 has been an eventful year in financial markets. To cool inflation currently running at multidecade highs, the Federal reserve has enacted a series of short-term interest rate hikes, raising rates from 0.25% in March to the range of 3.75%-4% as of November. With rising interest rates impacting borrowing costs and, as a result, potentially impacting consumer demand and corporate revenue, stock markets have fallen year to date.
Half Moon Bay provided a majestic backdrop for a major milestone recently, as some 35 Aramco scouts gathered for a camporee to celebrate 75 years of scouting in Dhahran. Boy and Girl Scouts from Dhahran’s Troops 1 and 966 cooked pancakes, fired arrows, built rafts, tied knots and discovered hidden treasure via geocaching.
The following morning, after another excellent breakfast, we collect the Land Rover Discovery, pay the parking fee, settle the hotel bill, load our bags and drive down the road at the start of a bright and sunny day. We join the A-1/A-12 and head northwest along a smooth, wide, toll road, with police checks about every three kilometers, which keeps us honest and careful of our speed.
The Leading National Academy (LNA) has been recognized by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) as the “Most Impactful Diversity & Inclusion Initiative” at the 2022 Middle East People Awards.
An accelerated transition to materials of the future must run parallel with the energy transition to contribute to climate protection goals and deliver on net-zero ambitions, Aramco’s president and CEO has told a major chemicals conference. Amin Nasser was speaking at the 16th Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA) Annual Forum in Riyadh, held for the first time in the Kingdom.
The pleasures of the holiday season, as celebrated in Aramco camps throughout the 1950s, are depicted here in photographs from the Arabian Sun & Flare.
Sweat beads Andrew Nemr’s face as he glides and clacks, clacks and glides his tap shoes on the well-scuffed wooden dance squares of his portable performance stage. Sound reverberates from the metal tapping tips at the toe and heel of each shoe, interspersed with his syncopated thumps on the wood. But he’s also talking, telling a story. It’s 2017, and his one-man production, Rising to the Tap, combines tap dance and choreography with storytelling.
Tourism is rebounding strongly from the pandemic and no place is this more apparent than in the Middle East, where the surge in tourism is simply profound. Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector is emerging as a serious contender to GCC countries as Vision 2030 is delivering on its plans for the economy’s future.
Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, a very good morning to you all. Let me add my congratulations to GPCA and their partners for bringing this important Forum to the Kingdom for the first time. And Riyadh — which aims to be among the 10 largest city economies in the world with Vision 2030 — is the ideal setting for the chemical industry to be just as visionary.
At noon on Tuesday, December 16th, with 12,543 km on the Land Rover Discovery, we arrive in Italy. As expected, because of the late departure, we have arrived later than scheduled and are further delayed by the customs people, who are slowly checking the unloading of trucks from the ferry.
I was a co-founder of the Dhahran Rugby Club in 1971 (I think) together with Peter Phillips who went on to also found a club in Salalah in Oman. He and I drove people working on the Dhahran Airbase as teachers, aircraft maintenance guys or the TTI, who wanted to play to the Aramco softball ground and kind of played without any posts. I think we might have even played a Royal Navy ship once.
From the Nov. 20, 1985 edition of The Arabian Sun. Doors are opening one by one in al-Mujamma', Dhahran's new community services center. Built on the site of the old commissary and icehouse, the new building has been designed with an emphasis on energy conservation and easy maintenance.
Aramco U-1 rig team, some of whose members are pictured above, and Loffland ST-1 rig team, share honors for setting two new drilling records in the Berri field last month. On Nov. 1, the Loffland Rig ST-1 completed Berri Well 61 at 8,779 feet in 21.9 days, a record performance for a directionally drilled offshore well.
To mark International Volunteer Day (today, Dec. 5), four members of the Industrial Training Department (ITD) volunteer program have spoken about their experiences, which include working at a food bank, helping children with disabilities, and supporting the “Blood Donation Campaign.”
Aramco’s Yanbu’ Refinery Department (YRD) has recently been recognized with five prestigious international workplace safety awards (through Loss Prevention) from the National Safety Council.
The game of Rugby Football has been played in Saudi Arabia since 1970 when some enthusiastic players of the Airworks company met to throw a rugby ball around amongst themselves. This official version is an amalgam of the prefaces for the 1978 Gulf Rugby Union Chairman’s Invitational and the 1979 Thailand Tour and has been updated with some statistics.
We drive up to the Greek border crossing and show the customs people our international insurance and our European passports, as I have transformed myself from Canadian to British. These documents are received well and there is no hassle and no problem, making this the easiest crossing so far.
Aramco’s Project Management (PM) recently won four international awards at the 2022 Construction Innovation Awards (CIA) ceremony — an event to celebrate excellence in the construction industry.
Featured in the Nov. 28 edition of the Sun and Flare: The Industrial Training Center, opened in July of 1955 as a part of the Dhahran Training Department, provides training for approximately 1,390 Saudi employee-trainees on both an assigned and a volunteer basis.
In this series, Mark Lowey, known as “Abu Jack” (Father of Jack) to his Saudi friends, tells the story of Bdah Al Hajri, whom he first encountered in the desert as an infant in 1979. Reunited in 2013, Abu Jack and Bdah have become close friends. From the age of seven to seventeen, Bdah attended Salasil school (1986 to 1997). Up to age 14, Bdah and his family lived in the desert north of Fardaniyah.