This Day in History (1984): Oil Exhibition Relocated to Dhahran Boulevard

From the May 9, 1984, edition of The Arabian Sun

Aramco’s Oil Exhibit Center is up and running in a new, temporary location on Dhahran Boulevard at the foot of Dhahran Heights near the old railway tracks.

Fashioned out of four connected portables renovated by the Community Maintenance Department, the facility provides interim offices for the Public Activities Division of Public Relations, a spacious walk-through exhibition and a theatre that seats 72.

The old oil exhibit, in operation since December 1974, was recently demolished to make way for an addition to the Dhahran Health Centre. The wing will provide 120 more hospital beds and a new, expanded emergency room.

Despite the dispossession, Aramco’s Public Activities program barely skipped a beat. While workmen were dismantling the exhibits beginning Feb. 11, visitors still came to Dhahran for general briefings and to view films about Aramco. Many were then bused to Abqaiq to tour the plants area of Ras Tanura, where they toured the refinery or terminal and took in displays at the Ras Tanura Exhibition Centre in Room 500 of the Old Administration Building. Displays there are similar to the ones in Dhahran. By the time the demolition in Dhahran began, the exhibits had been reassembled in the portables. However, visitors were unable to view films since the temporary auditorium was not yet finished. The 32-seater theatre at the Ras Tanura Exhibit Centre performed yeoman work in its stead.

Like the old exhibit center, the new temporary one features a series of lighted panels that untangle for the layman the mysteries of drilling, water injection, gas-oil separation, stabilization and other “imponderables,” such as what grade of oil come from what fields.

But perhaps the most intriguing lobby item is the scale model of what is yet to come — the new permanent oil exhibition center. Designed by a Jiddah firm specialising in modern Islamic Architecture, the building will be unique in Aramco. The permanent exhibit should be ready for occupancy in 1986.

Also on this day

2020 — The COVID-19 recession causes the U.S. unemployment rate to hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression

2001 — In Ghana, 129 football fans die in what became known as the Accra Sports Stadium disaster. The deaths are caused by a stampede that followed a controversial decision by the referee

1987 — LOT Flight 5055 crashes after take-off in Warsaw, Poland, killing all 183 people on board

1974 — Watergate scandal: The United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon

1958 — "Vertigo", the American film noir psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, is released

1955 — West Germany joins NATO

1950 — Robert Schuman presents the "Schuman Declaration", considered by some to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union

1865 — President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation declaring armed resistance in the South is virtually at an end; this is the commonly accepted end date of the American Civil War

1671 — Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London