Pet’s Walkabout
Chapter 35
Pet refused to walk ten paces behind Inspector Jabbar as was the social and religious custom for Muslim wives. There was no way she’d stoop to conquer by performing that obsequious act in front of anyone. That behavior didn’t comport well for a Radcliffe grad who was a staunch supporter of all-things women’s lib. But with all the improvised explosive devices littering the landscape in many parts of the Muslim world, there was now a certain irony about the servile act which women really appreciated. Watch your step my dear, sexist hubby. Step on a crack and break your mother’s back. But step on a mine, it would be fine. The resulting carnage would be especially gruesome if her husband was a baby boomer!
As Dick met with the navy, Pet took the tour of the complex, mostly by car given its enormous size. Jabbar was actually gracious when he deigned to allow Pet to sit in the front passenger seat rather than the backseat as customary for Muslim women. Score one for the Russian Orthodox church, she thought as they first drove through the large, residential compound for staff and families. It looked to her like a mid-fifties, middle-America community plopped whole onto the desert floor. She believed it could be called any town USA, but she’d be wrong.
Coming from the dun colored desert, the first thing that struck her was the amount of greenery in the compound: trees, grass, bushes and flowers were everywhere. It reminded her of the Wizard of Oz film starting in black and white and then opening to the vivid colors of Munchkin Land.
“We call it Little America, although American expats are now a small minority,” Jabbar casually mentioned as he slowly drove drown the wide, macadam paved streets.
“They built the community many years ago and we have added to it over time. This is the oldest of four camps, as they call them, in Ras Tanura. It’s also the closest one to the refineries, jetties and processing facilities too.”
“There are over three thousand workers and their families residing in this camp alone. Similar numbers at the other encampments. And many more employees and contractors commute daily from the vicinity of Jubail where you and Mr. Avery are staying. As you can see, this is an incredibly large complex. If anything untoward were to happen to it, it would devastate the Saudi and world economy.”
Pet thought the houses resembled a mini Levittown, although the suburban planning was much more esthetic and pleasing to the eye. Again, it could be a town anywhere in mid-America. She guessed the people living here had to occasionally pinch themselves to remind them of their surreal setting and circumstances: Toto, I’ve a feeling were not in Kansas anymore!
They stopped at a restaurant that served western food, taking a break from the tour. The sun was unbearably hot, she thought, as she got out of the car. Her headscarf helped cool her slightly and at least the Muslim custom for modesty had some practical value. Pet ordered lamb kabobs served with mint jelly as a nod to foreign tastes. Jabbar had a double cheeseburger with the works, along with fries and a coke. Pork rinds and beer weren’t on the menu.
The next stop on the tour was a small Saudi Aramco auditorium and a brief lecture on the workings of the complex. Jabbar said he was looking forward to the stop since he didn’t know much about Ras Tanura’s history or operations.
The presentation consisted of a canned slideshow with voice over and background music. It turned out to be a pretty slick production without too many back pats for the company. At least Jabbar thought so. Pet wasn’t so sure, but agreed it provided useful information to orient visitors to the complex.
Pet took notes to later brief Dick on key points when he returned from his holiday in Bahrain. She knew Bahrain was the hotspot to take off the burka, drink and carouse with the other expats. She was a little envious, but understood she would never be piped aboard by the U.S. Navy.
The takeaway, talking points from the show were as follows:
Ras Taruna lies at the tip of a small peninsula jutting out into the Persian Gulf and had a current population of over 70,000 people. It was wholly a company town with a small airport solely serving the needs of Saudi Aramco.
The first phase of the complex was built by the Americans, the Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO for short, in the early 1950s after the discovery of huge oil reserves underneath the Saudi sands in 1938. Concurrent with the building of oil production facilities, the Americans constructed housing and ancillary buildings such as schools, churches, recreational and medical facilities for its mostly American staff at the time.
In 1980, the Saudi government took over control and ownership of Ras Tanura and continued to build it out as the largest complex of its kind in Saudi Arabia and the world. It, along with other oil producing operations in the country, was renamed Saudi Aramco by royal decree in 1988.
The complex now had many refineries to process LPG, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil and asphalt. It had a gazillion storage tanks or that’s what Pet wrote down in her notes. The slightly exaggerated number would make sense to Dick who’d readily conclude it was a helluva lot.
The show then talked about technical operations that flew over both her and Jabbar’s head: such things as NGL processing, crude stabilization, gas condensates, hydro-cracking and other TECHNA-MENSA subjects that Pet, and probably the rest of the small audience, didn’t understand a word of.
The tour ended and Jabbar gassed up his car before driving Pet back to her hotel in Jubail. It cost him U.S. 22 cents a gallon for a larger, imperial gallon no less! He also didn’t have to wait in a long line or suffer the inconvenience of rationing. There was no shortage of gasoline in the kingdom or elsewhere, at least for now.