To Shaybah and Back

To Shaybah and Back

To Shaybah and Back

Twelve hours by car or a one-hour flight. Which would you choose?

Site Contents


• To Shaybah
  
• Shaybah - Some History
• The Empty Quarter
• Shaybah Facts
• My Visit and What I Found There
• Visitor Comments
• Interesting Links
• Scaling a Dune and Other Tales

To Shaybah

We were fortunate to have the chance to visit Shaybah while we were in Arabia for the first Saudi Aramco reunion on home soil. This was back in 2000, when the world seemed a simpler place.

As we neared Shaybah, the sand grew redder. The plane circled, then made its approach. The Empty Quarter was not so empty. The amazingly peaked dunes surrounded the extensive oil fields and pipelines that now make up Shaybah. It was not always so. This was destined to be the trip of a lifetime.

Shaybah - Some History

Shaybah is one of the largest petroleum ventures in the world. Saudi Aramco developed the field beginning in the first quarter of 1996, completing the project one year ahead of schedule. The Shaybah oil field is located 600 km southeast of Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia in the eastern Rub' al-Khali desert, one of the largest sand deserts in the world.

A 48-inch, 638-km pipeline was built to the processing center in Abqaiq. Pipeline facilities within the oil field total 730 km. Oil is then shipped to export terminals on the Arabian Gulf coast at Ras Tanura and Ju’aymah. Gas pipelines extend to the Haradh and Hawiyah gas treatment plants. This project mostly consists of horizontal wells to optimize net pay thickness.

Sources: Aramco website; Energy Information Administration Home Page