Photographic Memory: Building Ras Tanura

The twin crude distillation units at Ras Tanura were less than a year old when this photo was taken in the summer of 1946. Late in 1943, the U.S. government allocated scarce steel and other supplies for a large project in Ras Tanura to include a refinery, a tank farm, a marine terminal, and an underwater pipeline to Bahrain. 

The original plan called for two crude distillation units, each with a capacity of 25,000 barrels per day. The first distillation unit began operations in September 1945 and the second in December. The project was completed on schedule. By 1949, the refinery, through a series of modifications, had increased its capacity to 127,000 barrels a day.