https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/8285b329-e036-40e3-8bbd-55ff6e6ec41c Help us preserve, scan and post more rare and endangered films on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCddem5RlB3bQe99wyY49g0g/join Website: www.PeriscopeFilm.com This film "East West Petroline" (1980s) was presented by the Cat Houston Joint Venture. It shows the East-West Pipeline, also known as the Petroline, a 746 miles (1,201 km)-long 48 inches (120 cm) pipeline that runs from the Abqaiq oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (near Bahrain and Qatar on the Persian Gulf coast) across the width of the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea. It was built during the Iran-Iraq war for Petromin. 0:00 Saudi Arabia, despite being a desert kingdom, has vast proven oil reserves that will fund its ambitious development program for generations. 1:52: The Cat Houston Joint Venture. The joint venture, under contract with Petroline (a division of Petromin), is building the western section of a huge pipeline across Saudi Arabia. Cat Houston's participation involved a $35 million capital outlay for equipment and worker camps. Cat is a Lebanese partnership (founded 1941) experienced in large-scale projects across North/West Africa, Pakistan, and the Middle East, including airports, roads, hospitals, and industrial complexes. Houston Contracting Company (founded 1937, merged with Sedco 1969) is an American pipeline contractor specializing in major gas transmission systems in the US, with expanding worldwide operations. 4:23: Petroline is a 750-mile, $1.6 billion project designed to carry crude oil from the Ghawar fields (Eastern Province) across the kingdom to the west. Initial daily output is 1.85 million barrels, with a forecast expansion to 2.35 million barrels. Cat Houston's first major task was preparing the right-of-way, which involved extensive blasting to cut through rock and mountains. This required drilling holes one meter apart and inserting dynamite charges with delay caps to create a ripple-effect explosion. 5:59. Cat Houston used top-class, often brand-new equipment, such as the Jetco ditcher. The Petroline route is 3,600 km shorter than the sea route around the Arabian Peninsula, providing significant economic justification through reduced transportation costs. Beyond cost savings, the project provides Saudi Arabia with a crude oil export terminal on the Red Sea, giving the kingdom export capabilities on both coasts, reducing tanker traffic in the Gulf, and allowing for greater flexibility in oil distribution. 7:35 After excavation, the next stage was to string the pipes. Huge sections, 48 inches in diameter and 24 meters long, were brought from Yanbu, stored in yards, and then driven, carefully unloaded, and strung along the side of the trench. 8:33 The pipe was laid in tension to prevent it from buckling when the oil begins to flow at a temperature of 80° C. The pipes were bent—a complex operation—and then welded together in 1 km sections, requiring high-order skills and a willingness to work in difficult conditions. All Petroline welds were 100% x-rayed. 11:06 After welding, the field joints were coated with fusion bonded epoxy coating and checked to ensure the work was properly done, all to prevent corrosion. 12:30 Before laying the pipe, the ditch had to be bedded with sand and loose earth. Giant side booms were used to lift and lay the pipe into the bedded trench. The final stage was backfilling the trench. 14:36. Cat Houston employed 1,200 workers. Close coordination with all sectors of Petroline was essential for the project's smooth operation. Speedy contact with Cat Houston's main office in Jeda was maintained using a twin-engined company plane. 16:15 Loops in the line are actually valves designed to check the oil flow during a station shutdown. Once laid, the line was tested by pumping specially treated salt water from the Red Sea through the pipe, with care taken not to contaminate freshwater wells. 16:56: The completion of Petroline allows large quantities of crude oil to be pumped from Abqaiq to Yanbu, where it is stored in a tank farm with an 11 million barrel holding capacity. The End. Motion picture films don't last forever; many have already been lost or destroyed. For almost two decades, we've worked to collect, scan and preserve the world as it was captured on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm movies -- including home movies, industrial films, and other non-fiction. If you have endangered films you'd like to have scanned, or wish to donate celluloid to Periscope Film so that we can share them with the world, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us via the weblink below. This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToR_0J4jkuM Mirrored from Periscope Film (https://www.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm) Sat, 13 Jun 2026 15:03:40 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://peertube.dngr.us https://peertube.dngr.us/lazy-static/avatars/41a6fee9-7f57-42d0-a5fc-5db4f1af2e31.png https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/8285b329-e036-40e3-8bbd-55ff6e6ec41c All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://peertube.dngr.us/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.