Udhailiyah (Arabic: العضيلية ?u ayliyyah) [pronounced Ew'd Aleea] is a small oil company compound in the interior of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia located in the desert southwest of the Dhahran-Dammam-Khobar metropolitan area. Built by the national oil company Saudi Aramco, Udhailiyah has a population of approximately 1,350 residents, but few Americans or Brits. Udhailiyah can also be seen with the spellings Udeliya, Udayliyah, and other variations with the same phonetics.
Udhailiyah compound (Aramco code: UDH) is the smallest of four residential compounds built by Saudi Aramco, including Dhahran (the main administrative center), Ras Tanura (the main refinery and oil port), and Abqaiq. It is the southernmost and most isolated of the four communities, Abqaiq being its closest Saudi Aramco compound to the north, about an hour away by car. To the northeast is the city of Hofuf and the expansive Al-Hasa oasis. Udhailiyah takes its natural character from the numerous rocky hills or outcroppings, called "jebels", that surround it. The tallest and most popular Jebel is "Pioneer Mountain." An equally popular and impressive jebel is named "747" due to its likeness of a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.
Similar to the other three compounds, Udhailiyah is surrounded by a fence, Saudi Aramco employees and their dependents live inside. The community today is a multi-ethnic mosaic of Saudis, Americans, other Arab nationalities (e.g. Egyptian and Jordanian), Indians, Pakistanis, etc. - all of whom live with English as the common language.
Udhailiyah camp has amenities including a swimming pool, weight rooms (separate for males and females), a dining hall, golf course (sand and oil, not grass like the one in Dhahran), tennis facilities, squash and racquetball courts (which have been recently burned at the roof), library and a commissary (small grocery store). There is also the Wahat Al-Ghawar, a large, air-conditioned tent used for company and social events. Udhailiyah is lined with trees and grass and whenever you walk by someone you can't help but say "Hi".
The camp was originally a bachelor camp set up for drilling crews. In the late seventies it was expanded extensively to accommodate family status western employees. Beginning in 1977, the camp began taking in additional family status employees as the Gas Gathering Program began to take shape. Providing housing for Aramco's Gas Projects Division and their principal contractors, Fluor Arabia, Santa Fe, C.E. Lummis, and others, the camp expansion was designed by a California architecture firm that included green belts, adobe style town houses, and a new Kindergarten through ninth grade school. The camp thrived until it was "mothballed" in the late eighties following the completion of Phase IIA of the Gas Program. The camp was reopened in the early nineties near the end of Operation Desert Storm. In the years following Desert Storm, management kept the camp open and quietly played down any connection between Western personnel and the US military presence in the kingdom. The first residents of the newly reopened camp were faced with the daunting task of making this ghost town feel like home. For the first year, the Udhailiyah school operated with more teachers than students, but these "pioneers" made the most of the situation. Udhailiyah had originally been built to accommodate far more people than were now housed there. There was no traffic, there were no lines, just a comforting quiet reminiscent of small town America. Udhailiyans became very proud of the community.
The growth of radical Islamic violence in the kingdom, culminating in acts of terrorism against Aramco and contractor facilities and a steady undermining of western employee moral forced the company to appeal to the government for an armed security presence around all of its camps, including this remote location. A reinforced company sized detachment of Saudi National Guard forces equipped with Commando armored vehicles were set up at intervals around the camp perimeter. Internal changes also came to pass. The construction of a new and architecturally attractive Mosque within the camp brought in local outside attention, principally the local religious authorities (Mutawa, or "decency" committee) and much of the previous privileges and freedom of movement began to disappear, along with more and more of the western employees and their families as the Mutawa made their presence known. Restrictions on the movements of sinlge female employees also began to make things less bearable for western employees. A steady stream of incidents involving the intimidation of female employees, particularly medical employees began to take place on a more frequent basis. Currently, the camp houses less than one hundred western employees.
The Aramco compound is not the only one in Udhailiyah. The many service companies that do work for Aramco have their own compound. In the past many Schlumberger employees have been misled into thinking that they would be in the Aramco compound, but that is reserved for employees on family status.
There is a small airport in Udhailiyah (Udhayliyah Airport) however it as owned by Saudi Aramco thus not open for commercial air travel, even Saudi Aramco lately seems to have abandoned the airport in order to utilize the nearby airport in Hofuf which is 30 km away from Udhailiyah, it is also open for very limited commercial air travel with only two weekly flights to Jeddah by Saudi Arabian Airlines. Fully operational air transportation is only available in King Fahd International Airport which is about 200 km away causing inconvenience for Udhailiyah residents.
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