[custom_adv] Dhahran is a city located in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. It is a major administrative center for the Saudi oil industry. Together with the nearby cities of Dammam and Khobar, Dhahran forms part of the Dammam Metropolitan Area, which is commonly known as greater Dammam and has an estimated population of 4,140,000 as of 2012.Large oil reserves were first identified in the Dhahran area in 1931, and in 1935, Standard Oil drilled the first commercially viable oil well. [custom_adv] Standard Oil later established a subsidiary in Saudi Arabia called the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), now fully owned by the Saudi government and known as Saudi Aramco. Dhahran has been the home of Saudi Aramco's headquarters for 80 years and is its first and largest gated compound with more than 9,700 residents. [custom_adv] Employees and dependents of Aramco, known as Aramcons, have a tendency to use Dhahran to solely refer to the Aramco camp while using Khobar and/or Dammam to refer to the area outside the camp. The Saudi Aramco Residential Camp makes up much of the city of Dhahran today. [custom_adv] Dhahran is a short distance west of downtown Khobar. It is about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south of Dammam. Both are older Saudi port cities on the coast of the Persian Gulf. [custom_adv] Looking farther afield, Dhahran is northeast of Abqaiq, and southeast of Qatif and, further north, Ras Tanura, a major oil port. The Kingdom of Bahrain is also within easy driving distance to the east (about 32 km [20 mi]), across the King Fahd Causeway, from Khobar. [custom_adv] There are several notable landmarks in Dhahran City including KFUPM clock tower as well as Saudi Aramco's Al-Midra Tower and King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture. However, the tallest buildings in Dhahran are currently the new Al-Othman twin towers which are located in the north east of the city facing Al-Khobar. [custom_adv] The patch of desert on which the city is built is hilly and rocky, and most of the earliest productive oil wells in Saudi Arabia were drilled in the area, such as Dammam Well No. 7: "Prosperity Well", the first commercially viable oil well in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. [custom_adv] This well was still in production 70 years later. This later led to the selection of two barren nearby hills as the place for Aramco to construct its headquarters. [custom_adv] The Dhahran-Dammam area is one of two regions, the other being Jeddah, that were selected as potential sites to build the first Saudi nuclear reactor. [custom_adv] Saudi Aramco Residential Camp in Dhahran, known by its inhabitants as the Dhahran Camp, is the residential community built by Saudi Aramco for its employees. It is located within the city of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. [custom_adv] There are two areas recognized by the inhabitants in the Dhahran camp the first built is known to be Main Camp it is the oldest part and relatively the busiest as it contains most of the shops/parks while the other area known as the hills is the quietest since it is mostly residential. [custom_adv] The Dhahran residential camp is a fenced-in company compound and only Saudi Aramco employees and their dependents may live inside. It is located near the US consulate as well as the Dhahran military airbase, which is located in an area that formerly housed the domestic and international air terminals for the Eastern Province. [custom_adv] All commercial air passenger operations have since been moved to King Fahd International Airport in Dammam.
