Dammam city is the seat of the Governor of the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The city is located on the coast of the Arabian Gulf, around 400 kilometres (250 Miles) east of Saudi Arabia’s Capital city of Riyadh.

Dammam covers an area of about 800 square Kilometers (about 310 square Miles) and has a population of about 750,000. Dammam city is the main part of a tri-city metropolitan area named after it and includes the smaller cities of Dhahran and Al-Khobar. With these two cities, the population of the Dammam Metropolitan area reaches more than one million.

After spending decades as fishing and pearl-diving villages, the life in the Dammam tri-city Metropolitan – and in fact in the Eastern Province and the whole Kingdom – was transformed dramatically with the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in a field named after Dammam in 1938.

Currently, the Eastern Province holds, under its lands and waters, the world’s largest oil reserve and the world’s fourth-largest gas reserve. The Saudi petroleum industry, represented by the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, more commonly known as Saudi Aramco, with its headquarters in Dhahran, is deservedly leading the world’s petroleum industry and considered a vital component in the world’s energy industry. It provides the world with about 10% of its daily need for petroleum energy.

The discovery of oil in the Dammam Metropolitan and the development of the Saudi petroleum industry drew sizable local and foreign investments to the Eastern Province. It was also instrumental in developing other vital economic sectors throughout the Kingdom including the industrial, construction and business and financial sectors.

Being the Capital city of the Eastern Province, Dammam Metropolitan sits on the junction road that connects the Arabian Gulf States, namely Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has come a long way from being a small fishing village to becoming a major commercial port on the Arabian Gulf and a modern city by all standards. Some of the prominent features in the Dammam Metropolitan include the Headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest petroleum company, King Abdulaziz seaport, King Fahd Airport, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals and King Fahd Causeway, which connects Saudi Arabia with the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Links:
University of Dammam