Day 6

So last night I totally planned on keeping on track with the blog, and write up Saturday’s events on Saturday night. But instead I had to pack up, because we had to leave the hotel at 8:30 am, and didn’t want to rush to pack in only 30 minutes like last time. Plus, I wanted to get to sleep at a decent time, so that I wouldn’t be dead all day. Well, I did get the packing done, but it was about 2:00 am when I finished, so I didn’t get that much sleep. We’re all having problems now from all the free stuff we keep getting from all these visits. Now I know you guys are all going to say that I’m complaining about a good thing, but when you have a severely limited space, and you’re getting literature and books and pamphlets from every place you go, you start to run out of room. It hampers the ability to pack the stuff we want to take, and the things we by with our own money. And the problem is that we’re not allowed to just leave the literature in our rooms when we leave, because the hotels will mail it back to the places that we received it from, and that would make us seem ungracious. Not a good problem to have.
So Saturday began with a trip to the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. We met with a bunch of people from the public relations and international cooperation departments, and learned a lot about how Saudi Arabia is quickly becoming one of the world leaders in engineering and nanotechnology, again. I was amazed when I was told that KFUPM taught exclusively in English, except in the area’s of Islamic studies and those who were taking Arabic. But it’s not like a lot of people came to KFU for Islamic studies, since it was an energy, computer science, engineering, and architecture school. Islamic studies is really only offered as an elective course, since all students in the kingdom must take it no matter what school they attend.
After leaving the initial meeting and introduction to Dr. Khattab G. Al Hinai, Supervisor for Public Relations and International Cooperation, and Muhammad Hayyallah Al-Thabiti, Public Relations Representative/ Public Relations and Information, we were given a tour of the oil research and search department. This is where the brightest minds in the entire country scour the land with digital and thermal imaging to find new sources of oil, and the best ways to access the already found oil. It’s a pretty well known fact that all the major oil fields in Saudi Arabia have been found, but there is always the possibility to find smaller ones, and sometimes you can find a better way to access already found oil wells.
After the tour of the searching department, we left for the Saudi ARAMCO compound. I think a quick history lesson is in order here, because you should know about how oil is done in Saudi Arabia. In 1928(ish), the British basically owned all the oil fields around the kingdom. The way they did this, though, was through colonizing the lands and then basically ruling the people as they drilled for oil and took the resources away. Nobody had access yet to Saudi Arabia, but on the other hand, nobody really knew if they would have it. It wasn’t until Bahrain struck black gold that people thought it could be in Saudi Arabia. All the British oil companies in the region began to put bids in to the king for the concession to explore for oil. Fearing the British would come in and eventually colonize and take over his kingdom, the king granted the concession to an American company, since it was a private organization, and not involved with the government. The original company that began drilling here didn’t find oil until 1938, when “lucky oil well #7” struck a goldmine of wealth. The company was American to start out with, but eventually controlling interest was given over to the Saudi’s, which is how the government became so rich.
The company that was in charge of drilling the oil was called ARAMCO, which stood for Arabian American Oil Company, and today Saudi ARAMCO is the only producer of oil in the country, being state owned. However, it is not really state operated. ARAMCO has it’s own compound, that has different laws and rules than the rest of the country. For instance, women are allowed to drive on the campus, and don’t have to fully cover up. There are housing facilities, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, and everything else that a society needs to survive. Even though it is like another country, you don’t need a visa to get back into Saudi Arabia.
So that’s what Saudi ARAMCO is. It’s a great place, and it has a rich history. The first stop was to the history headquarters of the entire company, where we were showed a movie in their theater in 3D, and then given a private tour of the information exhibit. We were also informed that President Bush Jr was shown the movie in the same seats we were sitting in. The exhibit was really cool and informational, but we unfortunately didn’t have time to really read all the information and such, as we did have a strict schedule to adhere to. After the tour, we were driven to “Lucky #7”, the well that first produced oil for the Kingdom. It wasn’t really special, since they no longer drilled there, as it had been closed for some time now.
We had lunch with the American Consulate General in Dammam at our hotel afterwards. The Consulate General is basically like the ambassador to a country, but in a different region. And he doesn’t have final say as representative of the government. We met with his Excellency and his Public Affairs Officer, Cynthia Cook, for lunch, and the Consulate General gave us the whole spiel we’ve been hearing since the beginning of the trip about the history of Saudi-US relations. Listen people, we read book on the history of our relations. We wrote a book report on it. Then, we wrote a paper on the future of relations between our peoples. We don’t need any more history on how oil came here, and what our peoples have been through. We get it. Just let us get our food, and let us learn new stuff, OK? Thanks.
After lunch, we had a little free time at the hotel until we went to the Prince Sultan Center for Science and Technology. It’s basically a museum for people to learn about the living and mechanical world. For those of you who grew up in Charlotte, and went to public school, you know what the Discovery Place is. This place is the equivalent of that. For those of you who have not made it, go to the DP, and it’s the exact same thing. We even saw an IMAX film, called Journey to Mecca, which is about a 21 year old law student from Morocco who makes the hajj in the 14th century (the hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims must make at least once in their life to Mecca and Medina). It was really cool, but we had already seen the film once the first day here, but this time it was on the big, big screen.
The last event of the day was a visit to Heritage Village. If anybody reading this has seen the South Park episode where the kids visit “Pioneer Village” where the employees never break character, then you know how this goes. It was really cool, and we had a great time looking at random articles, as well as a gift shop, and then had true Saudi Arabian food. It was a really good time, and at the end, we were all stuffed, and wanted nothing more than to see the US-UK game. We made it back to our hotels in time to watch the end of it. You guys already know about how I spent my evening, so I’m going to go ahead and start working on the blog post for today’s activities. After the flight here lands.