Along the quiet waters of the Arabian Gulf, runs what was once a barren village, relying on fishing for sustenance. Pearl divers bought in those welcome extras to feed families living within the spent walls of their ramshackle homes. This was Jubail just some four decades ago. Today, a 45-minute drive to the city from the tourism belt of the Eastern Province – Dammam, Dhahran and Al-Khobar – will tell you a different story.
The waterfront remains unspoiled, but the rest is a transformation that may never have been witnessed anywhere else in the world. Massive shipping liners now ply the seas where once fishing trawlers ruled the roost. An ultra-modern city has sprung up in the vast wilderness where once none ventured. This is industrial Jubail – the indelible mark of Saudi Arabia’s vision for the future. Take a step into the past. Jubail’s history of development began in the ’70s when Saudi Arabia decided to build an industrial infrastructure to spur on the Kingdom’s economy beyond oil. The leaders of the time decided to invest in building a diverse base of industries for which oil and gas were essential elements. The seeds for a petrochemical industry in Saudi Arabia were thus sown.
To build a city from the sands upwards on inhospitable terrain was a mammoth task – a task that the global cities of today took decades to accomplish. All these elements had to be there: hardwearing roads, electricity plants, water systems and desalination plants, channels to bring in the raw materials for manufacture, airports, and seaports, besides housing, schools, hospitals, and recreational outlets for the scores of people who would eventually run and maintain the future plants. While the city became a reality in the mid ’80s, manufacturing plants mushroomed. Eye-sores that they might seem to be, a visitor would see them nothing short of a human feat when recognizing the arduous, protracted journey behind these metal-mangled edifices. The Jubail plan was drawn up in 1975. According to the plan, the area for development was divided into five parts: To the south, the industrial area and the port; to the north, the residential districts; between the two would be a zone for the administrative headquarters; east of the industrial area, were the construction support facilities; and the west, the airport and an extensive park.
Building the nation’s pride was a gargantuan task. To level the sites and raise their elevation, workers had to move tons and tons of earth; for electricity, generators had to be built with enough capacity, twice what was generated across the Eastern Province; for water, seawater was pumped in and filtered through state-or-the-art desalination plants. Today’s Jubail is the fruit of the pioneering forefathers who toiled to build a successful industrial city that is reaping extensive economic benefits today. Jubail’s location along the beach makes it an ideal spot for leisure away from the maze of manufacturing plants. It has a splendid coastline offering cool comfort, with calm beaches year round. The Palm Beach offers faultless white sand amid a serene setting of palm trees. Darren is ideal for children, and offers an impressive view of the sunset. The Fanateer Beach is another tree-lined ocean front, best explored on foot. In the early part of every year, Jubail is host to a flower and plant festival. The city’s beautiful landscape and gardens are spotlighted at the festival, raising awareness among the public of the significance of plant life to mankind. This year’s festival was the 15th of its kind.
A beach full of merrymakers and flower festivals, leave alone the giant manufacturing plants, would have been inconceivable to Jubail’s simple fisherfolk of yore. Yes, what the forefathers of Saudi Arabia undertook required extraordinary vision, remarkable courage and commitment beyond the ordinary. The result: an industrial city up from naught, representing one of the fastest and coherent industrialization developments of the century.

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