Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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1973, the U.S. Bechtel Corporation was contracted to draw up a master plan based on the
needs of several industries to be executed at various phases. The presentation of the city's
industrial plans in 1975 coincided with the birth of the Royal Commission for Jubail and
Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast. Yanbu was to be fed with a crude a pipeline crossing the
country to the west.
Bechtel was given a 20 years management contract starting June, 1976. The same
year witnessed the take over of Aramco by the Saudi government. Since its inception,
Aramco comprised a consortium of American oil companies, which had entertained
considerable control on the oil industry. By 1976, the government had gained "de jure"
control of Aramco. According to Steven, "This assumption of control marked a watershed
in the sense that Saudi Arabia was now theoretically in a position to directly implement
policy with respect to oil operations, whereas previously the control of the government had
been exercised in a more informal and indirect way."57
In August, 1976 the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) was
formed to act as an arm for the Ministry of Industry and Electricity. The subsidiary of
Bechtel, the Arabian Bechtel Company Limited, was assigned the task of preparing
infrastructural plans for the two industrial cities including supervising grant contracts. The
industrial city of Jubail was chosen to house the largest industrial harbor in the world, to
accommodate a population of 300,000 by the year 2,000 working in the petrochemical
complexes, oil refineries, a steel mill, and over a dozen other supporting industries. The
total bill of this adventure is estimated to reach $40 billion. These colossal ventures have
been argued by critics to be risky, given the context of the society's development phase and
world competition. Moreover, although the goal is to diversify the economic base of the
country, such industries are heavily dependent on the country's oil and gas reserves.58
The two multi-billion, mega-projects, oil-industrial complexes of Jubail and Yanbu
comprise two new experiments in Saudi Arabia's urban and regional planning. The
government-built town of Jubail is located on the Persian Gulf. .Originally, it was a small
coastal town with fishing and pearl-diving constituting the mainstay of its inhabitants'
living. A new massive master-planned city was laid in the vicinity of the quaint old town,
on a government-owned site of 1,030 square kilometers. It is projected to house a
population of 290,000 at its final developmental stage in 2010. On the west coast, the
government established the industrial Yanbu, anew. The wholly planned and fully-serviced