Word: jubail
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Saudis are placing their hopes for industrial growth in showcase projects like Jubail, a $20 billion new city that rises like a shimmering mirage above the turquoise waters of the gulf. Mile after mile of silver pipes snake across the sands at Jubail, and block after block of beige-colored bungalows fill its residential sector. From Jubail's plants come chemicals and fertilizers as well as iron, aluminum and steel. Planners expect the community to grow from the 30,000 residential workers it now houses to 300,000 by the year...
...slowdown comes at a time when such monumental undertakings as the $3.4 billion Riyadh International Airport and the $18 billion industrial city of Jubail are largely complete. Yet those and other ambitious projects will now cost millions to maintain. Perhaps because of that, the suddenly penny- pinching Saudis have been making life miserable for foreign companies accustomed to more opulent treatment. "It's horrible now," says one American contractor in Riyadh. "They don't pay, there's little new business, and they nickel-and-dime you to death with inspections and rules...
TIME'S article "The Jubail Superproject" [July 12] falsely compares the management effectiveness on the Riyadh and Jiddah airports in Saudi Arabia, one involving Bechtel and the other Parsons...
Moreover, Saudi social scientists warn of the lack of any sort of precedent for the migration of Saudi families in pursuit of employment. Even in a culture that has advanced from camels to Cadillacs since the discovery of oil, Jubail may remain an uncomfortable place for the mass of the Saudi population. And since the government has no plans for enforced migration of workers, an effort that would doubtless enrage every fiercely independent Saudi in the country, residents will have to move voluntarily. Otherwise, the infant city could wind up becoming an enormously expensive ghost town...
Should the Jubail project fail to live up to its billing, Bechtel's worldwide reputation would suffer a severe blow. As the prime mover behind the project, as well as its master planner, the firm bears a large responsibility for Jubail's eventual success. At this point, however, no one is betting against the California engineers. Muses a U.S. embassy officer from Jidda: "If Saudi Arabia is any indication, Bechtel follows one motto: Think big. You get the feeling that if the U.S. Government had not thought of the moon landing first, Bechtel would have proposed the idea...