Our History
VIDEO: Our History — Eyes in the sky
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Global Today
Pioneering Spirit
In a time of limited access and vast distances, aerial observation introduced a new way to understand the landscape, informing early exploration efforts.
In the 1930s, exploring access routes and oil field locations in the Kingdom was a major challenge, across vast lands that were difficult to interpret.
Exploration relied on long, slow ground expeditions.
But in 1934, a single aircraft changed the equation, the Fairchild 71.
From the air, surface formations and features helped reveal what lay beneath.
The aircraft did not discover oil itself, but it gave geologists a higher perspective, showing them where to begin looking.
