1965 Army Map Service City Plan of Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia

This is a 1965 Tactical Commanders' Terrain Analysis (TacCTA) map of Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, prepared by the Army Map Service for the Defense Intelligence Agency. The area is home to a large Saudi Aramco oil refinery and port, the main avenue for Saudi Arabia's oil exports, and the map would have been vital for any military operation that might take place there.

A Closer Look

This map covers the city of Ras Tanura on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. A grid overlies the map, dividing it into squares of 100,000 meters, as explained in the diagram at the bottom. Color-shading is used to distinguish residential from non-residential areas. Additional information on roads, pipelines, refinery facilities, and structures such as mosques, schools, and water wells is indicated according to the legend in the bottom-left margin. Many of these buildings are also listed in a 'Location of Key Installations' table at the bottom-left. Curiously, given the incredible level of detail provided, an adjacent table lists some facilities known to exist in the city but whose location is unknown. As on land, remarkably detailed information is provided on the port facilities and waters around Ras Tanura, including soundings, bottoms, piers, cranes, and lighthouses.

The verso provides an orientation map of the wider area around Ras Tanura on the east coast of Saudi Arabia, from Dosiriya (now al-Jubail) to Dhahran and Bahrain. The scope of the recto map and the map on the accompanying sheet (see 'Publication History and Census' below) are denoted. A legend at right provides symbols for a wide range of features, including roads, railroads, pipelines, airports and air fields, terrain, and maritime features.

Mapping Military Intelligence

This map was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), created in 1961 and housed within the Department of Defense under the leadership of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. The agency is thus independent of both the military services (whose intelligence outfits it took over many functions from) and the Central Intelligence Agency. The DIA is tasked with providing intelligence information to the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and military commanders.

The present map reflects the assiduousness of the agency's work, with granular detail and analysis that would be critical in any military operation at Ras Tanura. Given the importance of Ras Tanura for global oil supply and the highly unsettled state of regional politics (including a dispute within the Saudi monarchy between King Saud and his half-brother Faisal, who deposed the former in 1964) set against the background of the Cold War, one can imagine that this map would have been essential for safeguarding the Aramco facilities at Ras Tanura in the event of a military conflict.

Ras Tanura and the Oil Industry

Ras Tanura is a settlement set on a peninsula jutting out into the Persian Gulf, located between Bahrain and Kuwait, forming the top portion of Tarut Bay. Its history is closely tied to the oil industry as it is home to major refinery and port facilities. When large quantities of oil were first discovered at nearby Dammam in 1938, the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), forerunner to Saudi Aramco, built a pipeline to Ras Tanura, and a refining plant was put into operation. During World War II, a new, wider pipeline and a much larger refinery were constructed to support the war effort. Export capacity continued to expand, reaching 1 million barrels per day in 1971 and roughly 6 million barrels per day nowadays, some 90% of Saudi Arabia's oil exports, making Ras Tanura the largest oil port in the world.

CASOC/Aramco also built a relatively luxurious residential compound near the refinery at Najmah (Nejma here) for American workers, which has in the decades since come to house a more cosmopolitan mix of employees, including many Saudis. The adjacent town of Rahima (Rahaima here) historically housed Saudi and other non-Western workers, though these divisions were not always absolute. Other nearby facilities, such as a hospital and golf course, and the neighborhood of Radwah, are also part of this general residential area of the city. The Italian Camp to the south of the refinery was built to house some 1,700 Italian workers recruited from Eritrea at the end of World War II.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by the Army Map Service in 1962, compiling information from somewhat earlier maps, and then was reprinted with the intelligence information overprint in 1965 for the DIA. It is part of a set of two maps, the other being Sheet 2, 'Ras Tanura Area Terrain Analysis Map,' also offered by us; while the latter map focuses primarily on roads and maritime approaches to Ras Tanura, the present map highlights the oil refinery and port facilities themselves. Originally marked 'confidential,' the maps were declassified in August 1991 (after the conclusion of the Gulf War). We are only aware of one other example of this map, held by the Library of Congress.