Newsletter No. 571
News-Analysis
April 4, 2007

 

A special thanks to Muhammad Yusuf (Shingetsu Member No. 142) of The Gulf Today newspaper in Sharjah for being the first to bring this story to my attention.

MITSUI & COMPANY WINS MAJOR CONTRACT FOR SAUDI RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION

Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co. announced yesterday that they had won a US$763 million contract to build a railway in northern Saudi Arabia. Al-Rashid Trading & Contracting Co. of Saudi Arabia and Australia’s Barclay Mowlem will also be involved in this project.

Map: Railway Project in Saudi Arabia
Source: Mitsui & Co. website

The section of the railway that Mitsui will be responsible for will stretch for 818 km, and consists of a fork that begins from Haditha and Jalamid in the north, meeting together at Bosayata, and continuing on to Nafud.

When completed the entire North-South Railway (including the sections that Mitsui has no connection with) will stretch to Riyadh in the south, and to Ras al-Zur on the Persian Gulf coast. The railway will be used primarily to transport bauxite and phosphate to Ras al-Zur, where a US$3.5 billion fertilizer plant and a US$6 billion aluminum smelter are being constructed.

It will be recalled that last month there was an unconfirmed report that Mitsui & Co. would be involved in a US$8 billion investment in a petrochemical project in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. That report remains unconfirmed.

Also, it is worth noting that the Arabian Oil Company lost its concession to the Khafji oil field on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border in February 2000 over disagreements about the construction of a US$2.1 billion railway in eastern Saudi Arabia.