8 | Modern Saudi Arabia here for employment. Because of its highly diverse population, including a large number of Western employees and their families, the Eastern Province is arguably the most Westernized region in the country. The region contains enormous reservoirs of oil beneath it. The Ghawar field, stretching for more than 124 miles from north to south, is the largest single oil field in the world. Unsurprisingly, the economy of the Eastern Province almost entirely relies on oil and petroleum-based industries. Oil facilities are concentrated in the north of the region, near the Kuwaiti border. These include Ras Tanura, the main Saudi Aramco terminal that extends to Khafji in what was once part of the Saudi-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone but was divided between the two countries in 1966. North of Ras Tanura is Jubail—the site of the first disembarkation of American oilmen in 1933 to what was then a small village. In the course of only a few decades, this village has grown into an important industrial center in the Middle East, serving both as the principal site of Saudi Arabia’s petrochemical industry and the main Saudi naval base on the Persian Gulf coast. The city of Dammam is the capital of the Eastern Province and its largest urban cen- ter. Like Jubail, not so long ago it was a small pearling port, but the oil boom quickly transformed it into a busy metropolis. Dhahran, located to the south of Dammam, is another major administrative center of the Eastern Province. Dhahran is home to Saudi Aramco headquarters, King Faysal University, and the U.S. Consulate General. The city of Khobar is yet another urban center that rapidly grew from a seaside village into one of the biggest cities in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Dammam, Dhahran, and Khobar constitute the Dammam metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as the “Triplet Cities.” See also: Chapter 4: Agriculture Oil Industry and Aramco. Chapter 5: Shia Commu- nity. Chapter 6: Urbanization. Further Reading Jones, Toby Craig. Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia. Har- vard University Press, 2010. Mandaville, James. Flora of Eastern Saudi Arabia. Taylor & Francis, 2013. Nicholson, Eleanor. In the Footsteps of the Camel: A Portrait of the Bedouins of Eastern Saudi Arabia in Mid-Century. Transworld Arabian Library, 1983. Pampanini, Andrea. Cities from the Arabian Desert: The Building of Jubail and Yanbu in Saudi Arabia. Praeger, 1997. Environmental Issues after the Gulf War The First Gulf War (1990–1991) brought about a serious environmental crisis after the largest oil spill in history occurred in the Persian Gulf. The volume of the spill was about 240 million gallons, and the maximum size of the oil slick was 100 miles by 42 miles, in some areas as deep as 5 inches. This environmental catastrophe had a devastating impact on the Saudi Arabian shoreline, in addition to the Kuwaiti and Iranian coasts,
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