Jubail Industrial City (JIC), Saudi Arabia's leading industrial area with a total investment of $46 billion, accounts for almost 60 per cent of the Kingdom's non-oil exports and has registered sustained annual production growth of four per cent. JIC is also the largest converter of natural gas resources to added-value petrochemicals with a 6 to 7 per cent market share of world petrochemicals.

Covering an area of 1,016 sq km and located 100 km north of Dammam and 10 km north of Al Jubail in Saudi Arabia's eastern region, JIC is also the leading area for overall investment and foreign joint-venture capital with almost 50 per cent of the Kingdom's total investment. It provides the infrastructure that now serves 146 industries including private sector participation and is the largest employer of Saudi nationals in the industrial sector, accounting for 25 per cent of the country's total.

JIC has mainly three categories of industries - primary, secondary and support and light industries. According to the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, the capital investment for infrastructure including land development, roads, utilities and industrial and commercial ports totalled $11 billion and that for industries was $31 billion, the figure covering 17 primary industries, 20 secondary industries and 109 light and support industries. Another $4 billion in capital investment went into the residential and commercial sector comprising 15,800 residential plots and 563 commercial units.

The primary industry products include typical refinery items for export; ammonia, fertilisers and urea; methanol, olefins and aromatics (benzene, xylenes and styrene).

Other products are polymers (polyethylene including LDPE, LLDPE and HDPE), polypropylene, polystyrene and PVC; ethylene oxide; chlorine, oxygen, nitrogen and rare gases; billets and flat product steel.

The secondary industry products include formaldehydes, epoxy resins, caustic soda prills, steel products, fibreglass products, speciality PVC-based products and floatglass products.

The support and light industry products comprise large- and small-vessel fabrication, cement, paints, plastic packaging materials and machining.

In 2001, the feedstock available was 1.34 billion cu ft per day of methane, 2.77 billion cu ft per day of ethane and 90,000 bpd of NGL. Primary industry production was: petrochemicals, 33 million tonnes per year (tpy), steel 4.1 million tpy and refined products 16 million.

Secondary industry production was petrochemicals, 400,000 tpy and steel products, 430,000 tpy.

JIC is a self-sustaining community with 20 commercial centres, two hospitals, five clinics, two colleges, 50 schools and kindergartens and a total of 20,000 students.

The city's population at the end of 2000 was 106,000, of whom 59,900 were working within the city confines.