Exporting segregation: An ugly side of the oil business exposed

… From the beginning, ARAMCO’s camps in Dhahran were set up according to a strict hierarchy of racial divisions. Ostensibly based on skill levels, this system allocated the best housing and amenities to Americans — of all ranks — while European and South Asian workers had to make do with significantly less, and Saudi workers were consigned to “barastis,” palm-frond huts without floors or lights. A visiting State Department official called the company’s camp “a disgrace to American enterprise,” while the American vice consul at Dhahran visited the company hospital and reported that “it is apparent that ARAMCO’s medical director takes little interest in the health and care of Arabs.”

ARAMCO fought hard to preserve its image as an exemplar of enlightened self-interest, and as a bringer of development to Saudi Arabia. It argued that other oil firms in the region treated their workers even more poorly, and blamed the Saudi government for forcing segregation on ARAMCO for religious reasons. Vitalis rejects the company’s “exceptionalist” thesis, pointing out that in countries like Iran — which, before a CIA-backed coup in 1953, had a parliament, a press and unions — oil company reforms had gone much further than in Saudi Arabia. Further, ARAMCO’s camp design was not a unique response to local religious culture, but was rather a direct descendant of the segregated camps set up by mining and oil firms in the American Southwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

San Francisco Chronicle