Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline)

The Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline) was the largest oil pipeline in the world at the time it was inaugurated. It crossed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from the east heading north until it reached the city of Sidon in Lebanon. The pipeline was inaugurated in 1950 to deliver oil to European markets across the Mediterranean Sea. Transporting oil via the Tapline continued for about forty years before it was decommissioned in 1990. The Kingdom signed an agreement to build the pipeline with the Trans-Arabian Pipeline Co. (Tapline) nine years after the discovery of oil in the Kingdom, since commercial oil quantities made trans-Mediterranean exports viable.

The 1,648-km steel Tapline is linked to a five hundred km long pipeline connecting Saudi oil fields, owned by Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco). It took three years to complete the Tapline’s installation at a cost of USD230 million. More than sixteen thousand engineers and workers took part in its construction. The Tapline consumed more than 200,000 nine-meter long steel pipes, and had a capacity of five million barrels of oil that crossed Arab countries in sixteen days.

The line crossed arid and rugged territories before Saudi cities gradually formed and burgeoned on its fringes, at a time when Tapline personnel settled in them. Such cities include Qaisumah in the Eastern Province and the cities of Arar, Rafha and Tarif in the Northern Border Province. Saudi oil was processed and then pumped into the Abqaiq Oil Field establishments, before traveling via the first tapline pumping station in Qaisumah City. From there, the Tapline passed through three cities in the Northern Border Province: Rafha, Arar and Tarif, down to the last point within Saudi territory, which is Al-Qurayyat Governorate in Al-Jawf Region, then through Jordan and Syria, and ending in Sidon Port in Lebanon.

Before the Tapline's decommissioning in 1990, it was halted several times. The Tapline was affected by the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, thus preventing oil pumping to Sidon in 1983. This prompted Aramco to stop its operation in 1984, and it was eventually decommissioned due to the Gulf War.

The seventy-year-old Tapline is the first industrial heritage site in the Kingdom. It was selected in 2020 by the Heritage Commission of the Ministry of Culture to be listed in the national register of industrial heritage, as a testament to its role in the industrial and economic development in the Kingdom.