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Boosting the country’s mining infrastructure, Saudi Arabia has unveiled a SAR 86 billion ($35.6bn) project, Wa’ad Al Shamal, a new integrated industrial city near Turaif in the Northern Borders Province.
Vast wealth and the promise of dramatic change make for cautious optimism concerning Saudi Arabia, the chief executive…
1855 Views | the publication reaches you by | Saudi Arabia TodayAlso known as ‘Northern Promise’, the development is expected to become a major mining hub in the region while furthering economy and creating thousands of jobs.
“The Northern Promise can be a prime catalyst in creating transformational industries that can generate more growth and more value from niche manufacturing sectors such as manufacturing glass, glass fibres, plastics and solar panels,” said Saudi Aramco’s president and chief executive Amin Nasser.
About 30,000 jobs are expected to be created for Saudi youth, especially those from the region. The 440 square kilometres development is already hosting phosphate processing facilities.
“What we see now at Wa’ad Al Shamal city is the productive outcome of close collaboration between government sectors, agencies and leading national companies,” added Mr Nasser.
Supplying competitive gas feedstock to Wa’ad Al Shamal – around 1,000 kilometres from Saudi Arabia’s capital city Riyadh – was initially deemed as complex and costly due to its terrain and geography. However, Saudi Aramco came up with efficient solutions to explore and drill gas resources in the region, specifically unconventional gas.
Unconventional gas is natural gas extracted from sources of production that are, in a given location, considered to be new and different. Its production will replace the burning of hydrocarbons for electricity generation.
Saudi Aramco had commenced commercial production of unconventional gas in the North Arabia Field in May 2018, supplying approximately 55 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (MMscfd) to a local power plant. The gas production will ramp up to 190 MMscfd towards the end of 2018 to meet customers’ needs.
According to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), construction of Waad Al-Shamaal industrial city started in 2014.
A 290 square kilometres area has been allocated to Waad Al-Shamaal city, in addition to an adjacent land of 150 square kilometres for Riyadh-headquartered Maaden Company to develop a phosphate industry, which is the core project of the city.
After the finishing of the second phase of the project in the coming months, the Kingdom’s production of phosphate fertilisers will increase to 9 million tonnes annually, making it the second largest producer in the world, SPA said.
150 take part through Watani Al Emarat via the ‘Your City Needs You’ initiative Over 150 volunteers –…
1615 Views | the publication reaches you by | Saudi Arabia Today
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The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are the seven Arab states which border the Persian Gulf, namely Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).This excludes the non-Arab state of Iran. All of these nations except Iraq are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
