Bechtel hired Wallie Ballor in 1944 to install a high voltage line from Dhahran to Ras Tanura as part of the construction of the refinery at Ras Tanura. With two crews of installers - one Italian and the other Saudi, he installed power poles between the towns and wired them up. It was a thankless task, digging deep post holes in the sand and sabkha every 50 yards or so, and raising the 40 foot poles in the heat and humidity and in spite of shammals (sandstorms). After he was done he helped wire up the refinery itself, no small task in itself.
His photographs are a rare look at a contractor’s life in the great postwar expansion of Aramco and a reminder that it was the efforts of countless people from all walks of life that built the company that endures to this day.
Vicci at Shaybah in 2003 flanked by Stephen Sapienza of Azimuth Films
After World War II in Aramco there was born an informal newsletter that informed the employees about events and activities, by the early fifties this newsletter became The Sun & Flare, a weekly English newspaper that carried the latest news and announcements of community interest. Read the rest of this entry »
Ten weeks after the Royal visit to Ras Tanura, tragedy struck, Dammam Well #12 exploded into a raging inferno. Without fire-fighting equipment or protective clothing the oil men - Saudis and Americans alike, battled the blaze for ten days before finally putting it out.
The King visits Ras Tanura to inaugarate the first tanker load of oil produced by Aramco. This video combines the footage from four different cameramen.
It is fitting that Range Magazine, the voice of the American West would publish this excerpt from Discovery! in the Winter issue. Steve Furman was in charge of feeding the 100 Americans cut off from supplies during WW II and when one day he met Mutlaq he set in motion a 1200 mile cattle drive from Yemen to Dhahran the likes of which had never been seen before in Arabia and hasn’t been seen since. Read the rest of this entry »
In his essay in the SF Chronicle Philip Fradkin writes that Discovery! “proved popular within the company and went through three printings, each with its separate heroic cover. ” Read the rest of this entry »
“The timing [of Discovery’s release] couldn’t be better, given Saudi Arabia’s deepening importance to the United States as a Middle Eastern ally, and the continuing cultural differences that make that relationship so challenging.”
Leave it to the perceptive eye of an editor at Advocate Opinion in Baton Rogue to fully understand that Discovery! is at heart a story of men and women collaborating across cultures to build an oil company from scratch in a remote desert.
The lesson of this success as related by Wallace Stegner is a fascinating history well worth reading.
Philip Fradkin’s Sunday article in the San Francisco Chronicle is based on a press release that he has been trying to peddle for a month. Apparently the Chronicle has no policy about checking facts, let alone outrageous contentions, so they not only printed it but also agreed to drop any plans to review Discovery!
I hope for Philip Fradkin’s sake that his upcoming biography of Wallace Stegner is written with a great deal more accuracy and intellectual honesty than is demonstrated in this error-ridden essay. The heart of his argument is that the book Selwa published, Discovery! The Search For Arabian Oil, is ”a work edited and rewritten by company flacks for in-house consumption.” This is a falsehood and I’m surprised that Stegner’s biographer can’t see that Discovery! couldn’t have been written by anyone else - unless he didn’t read it which he admitted was the case as recently as a month ago. Read the rest of this entry »
November 28th, 2007, Thomas Lippman and Tim Barger gave a presentation at the Library of Congress. This hour long discussion about the people and places of Saudi Arabia and the world of Discovery! - seventy five years ago, is now available for viewing at the C-SPAN Video Library. Read the rest of this entry »
Sadly the critics of Discovery! continue to spin the web, trying to diminish the work of the man they claim to represent. On NPR today among other things I was called a “pirate” by Page Stegner and on NewWest.net Page accused Selwa Press of ”omitting passages that “portrayed ARAMCO critically or would have caused problems between the company and Saudi Arabia’s leaders.” Read the rest of this entry »
