[Map] Water Well Location Plan - Conventional Wells Exhibit A, Rev. No. 0 - Shedgum - Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, Issued for Bids 10 June 1977 (1958, 1960, 1977)

Blueprint map 143x109cm, 1:500,000. Very good, neatly folded with some wear to the folds. This is an in-house operational map, with no other copies or references found. Dated 10 June 1977, it supported planning for the natural gas pipeline from Shedgum in Eastern Province, to Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, the longest and most advanced ever built. Construction began in 1978: "It ran parallel to Petroline, a crude oil pipeline Petromin was building, and went into service in July 1981. The 1,170km pipeline crossed some of the roughest terrain on the Arabian Peninsula, from sand dunes to lava fields and mountains. As Saleh Al-Redaini, the senior engineer on the project, recalled, 'Going across Saudi Arabia we had to drill our own wells for water supplies and build our own roads for transportation, especially in the west'. On July 28, 1980, the final section was lowered into a shallow trench 1,082 meters high in the Hijaz Mountains." (Saudi Aramco, Energy to the World Vol 2, 2011: 53-58, 185). It formed part of a Master Gas System, which Aramco was asked to design, develop and operate as "the most ambitious energy project in history". This map combines 2 adjacent Geographic Maps from the USGS 1956-63 survey as its base. The survey had been led by Glen Brown, in close cooperation with the Saudi Government and Aramco. The first, I-205B Northeastern Hijaz Quadrangle, was originally prepared by Brown and Roy Jackson in 1958, and the second, I-206B Wadi Ar Rimah Quadrangle by Richard Bramkamp, Leon Ramirez, and Brown in 1960. Layered on top of this is the new title panel, with two lines connecting the proposed water wells through the Hejaz mountains, one close to the Darb al Hijaz / Riyad-Jiddah Road, and the other north of the pipeline in a wadi near Al Mishab.