10 facts about SADARA

The reason that brings me to the Kingdom (as people often refer to Saudi Arabia here) - it's the new Sadara complex in the Eastern Province, which hugs the Persian Gulf.  The place is massive!!  Basically,  everything is super-sized !  So much for everything being BIG in Texas.

1. The complex is comprised of 26 integrated operating plants that were built all at once.  The biggest undertaking of its kind for a petro-chemical complex ever!
2. Price tag: $20 Billion Dollars.
3. There were 60,000 people on-site at the peak of contruction!!! (2014-2015 time frame.)  Like someone pointed out: if everyone eats half a chicken a day that equals 210,000 chickens a week to feed this crew!
4. There are 4 separate envelopes on site: Isocyanates, Chemicals, Plastics and Hydrocarbons.
5. The project is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco (60%) and Dow (40%)
6. There were up to 600 Dow employees (known as Dow Secondees) helping during the design, commissioning, start-up and early operation phase of this mega project.  They are being released as the plants start up - currently there's about half that number.  Some fellow Dow Fort Saskatchewan employees were/are part of that.  (I'm not one of those but rather a Sadara direct employee to move in to the operating/long-term phase.)
7. Many of them feel very satisfied to have seen a sandy desert field turn into a world-scale operating complex.  They feel it they may never experience such a challenging experience ever again.  Not necessarily because of that, but many are retiring after this project.
8. As well, the project is also getting good support from Saudi Aramco including their influence with procurement of materials and customs issues.
9. Supposedly every major EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) firm in the world had a least a small hand with this project.
10. There's a neighboring large Value-Park planned next door to create next stage products from the Sadara products.  So the love continues!  The Saudi government has great expectations for Sadara and Value-Park creating many jobs for Saudi nationals.