Gulf Arabs on track with rail network

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf partners are driving to develop a railroad grid across the Arabian Peninsula that would reduce the strategic threat to their exports of oil, gas and other resources.

The plan is to link the oil-rich region's network to Jordan to connect it to the rest of the Arab world and even Europe through Turkey.

That's a grandiose version of the Hejaz Railway that ran from Damascus to Medina in Saudi Arabia, built by the Ottoman Turks in 1900-08 and a favorite target of Lawrence of Arabia and his desert warriors 10 years later.

Saudi Arabia is the key driving force in the drive to build a rail network linking the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The others are the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.

"Taking their lead from the golden days of European railways, the six GCC states are planning ambitious rail systems to carry both passengers and freight," the Middle East Economic Digest reported recently.

This regional network will cost more than $20 billion and total 1,380 miles of track. Once that's in place, the grid will run from Kuwait at the northern end of the gulf to Muscat, capital of Oman on the peninsula's southeastern tip.

Industry analysts say that Middle East governments have committed more than $100 billion on railroad projects in the coming years.

For the gulf states, a major rail grid crisscrossing the desert wastes will have strategic implications because it will allow them to ship their oil and gas exports, the mainstay of their economies, overland if Iran carries out its threat the close the Strait of Hormuz, the only way in and out of the Persian Gulf.

Forty percent of the world's oil supplies pass through the straits every day.

Saudi Arabia leads the rail-building drive in the gulf and the first of its major rail projects is scheduled for completion in the next few months.

It's the first new rail network on the Arabian Peninsula since T.E. Lawrence kept blowing up the Hejaz Railway nearly a century ago.

"Unlike Iraq and Iran, North Africa, much of the Levant and Arabia has been left with no rail legacy from the colonial era," MEED noted.

This is a 928-mile north-south railroad linking the phosphate and bauxite mines at Jelamaid in the north to the industrial zones on the gulf coast at Ras al-Zour.

MEED says some 750 miles of track have been laid, with some 2 miles a day being completed daily.

"We're on schedule to begin operations during the first quarter of 2011, although it's possible the project could begin operating as early as December," declared Salman al-Madi, marketing director of Saudi Arabian Railway, which oversees the project.

Once operational, the company's planned 25 diesel locomotives from Electro-Motive of the United States will haul 100 wagons carrying 15,000 tons of cargo per trip -- the equivalent of 600 truckloads by road -- to the Eastern province on the gulf.

A passenger line is to be built alongside the freight track from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to al-Haditha on the northwestern border with Jordan.

Another key project is the $7 billion, 245-mile Haramain High-Speed Rail between the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, burial place and birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed, which will carry the 10 million Muslims who make the pilgrimage every year.

When it's completed in 2013, it will carry passengers between the two cities and the Red Sea port of Jeddah at 188 miles an hour.

The United Arab Emirates plans to build the $11 billion Union Railway, a 940-mile state-of-the-art network.

The first phase will be a 165-mile line connecting the Shah gas field in the south with oil and gas refining facilities at Habshan in the southwest. It's slated to carry 10,000 tons of granulated sulfur a day.

These projects have been plagued by traditional rivalries between the ruling families of the Arab states in the gulf, but a GCC rail authority is now in the works.

Jordan, established by the Hashemites who fought alongside Lawrence, is seen as the ideal hub for rail links between the GCC, North Africa and the Levant.