This Day in History (1975): Riyadh Refinery

From the Feb. 12, 1975, edition of The Arabian Sun

Petromin's new Riyadh Refinery is now supplying the capital city and surrounding area with 15,000 barrels of refined products daily. Crude oil for the refinery is supplied by three GOSPs in Aramco's Khurais Field through a 141-kilometer long, 12-inch diameter pipeline.

Located 20 kilometers southeast of Riyadh on the Riyadh-Al Kharj Highway, the refinery employs 500 men in three shifts around the clock. Water used in the refining process comes from wells drilled on the one square kilometer refinery site.

Construction is such that refiner capacity can be easily increased to 28,000 barrels per day as the demand for refined products grows in the area.

Process design for the refinery was done by Universal Oil Products of Des Plaines, Il.. Mechanical design and construction were completed by the Chiyoda Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd. of Japan.

Also on this date

2019 — The Republic of Macedonia renames itself the Republic of North Macedonia, in deference to a long-standing naming dispute with Greece

2002 — The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, begins at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He dies four years later before its conclusion.

1990 — Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian history when she becomes Premier of Western Australia

1980 — Actress Christina Ricci is born in Santa Monica, California

1974 — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union

1963 — Construction begins on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri

1947 — Christian Dior unveils a "new look," helping Paris regain its position as the capital of the fashion world

1924 — George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" receives its premiere in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music" in New York City

1912 — The Xuantong Emperor, the last Emperor of China, abdicates

1909 — The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded

1855 — Michigan State University is founded

1771 — Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden