Dhahran

Dhahran is a city in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, known by its Arabic name aẓ-Ẓahrān. It is a major administrative centre for the Saudi oil industry and counted 143,936 residents in 2022. Together with the neighbouring cities of Dammam and Khobar it forms the Dammam Metropolitan Area, often called greater Dammam, whose estimated population was 2.2 million in 2022. The city's story is tied to petroleum. A concession agreement to search for oil was signed in Jeddah on 29 May 1933 between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Standard Oil of California, and the first oil in commercial quantities was produced in 1938. The company later formed a subsidiary, the Arabian American Oil Company, now owned by the Saudi government as Saudi Aramco, whose headquarters has stood in Dhahran for about ninety years. A large part of the city is made up of gated areas, among them the Aramco headquarters and residential camp, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the King Abdulaziz Air Base. The Mall of Dhahran is among the largest shopping complexes in the Eastern Province.