Saudi Aramco is considering building a new industrial city in the east of Saudi Arabia, industry sources told Reuters on Sunday.
According to people with knowledge on the matter, international engineering companies have already bid for work. One source said the new city would be built around energy-related industries, such as support services for power generation and transmission and renewable energy such as solar may be included, Reuters reports.
The city is reportedly planned in the south of the al-Ahsa district in the Kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province, also home to Aramco’s headquarters.
Other industrial cities currently under development in the Kingdom are King Abdullah Economic City and Jazan Economic City.
Aramco is building Phase 1 of the Jazan project, with the company’s chairman Khalid Al-Falih in April calling it “Saudi Armaco’s highest priority over the next three years”.
At the heart of the Jazan Economic City will be the Jazan Refinery and Terminal, a Saudi Aramco-owned facility with the capacity to process more than 400,000 barrels per day of crude oil into fuels for domestic and international customers.
Jazan Refinery will also be equipped with a state-of-the-art port and a 4-gigawatt power plant that will make the refinery self-sufficient and will provide power for locally owned manufacturing and service companies. Jobs and training.
Over the next four years of the Refinery Project’s construction phase, local contracting firms will train and hire about 5,000 young Saudis for construction-related jobs.
It is estimated that an additional 75,000 jobs could be created over the long term as the economic city attracts a range of medium- and light-industrial companies, as well as clusters of service industries such as engineering service companies, parts suppliers, and more.
In 2013, oil minister Ali al-Naimi said Aramco was looking at such a project on the road from Dammam to Ahsa.
