I was there when the pig came through
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2026 3:26 am
We are hearing a lot about the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entrance to the Persian (Arabian) Gulf through which much of the world’s oil supply passes and which Iran has now closed. The huge oil and gas fields of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran mostly lie at the northern end of the gulf. In the 1980s the Saudis decided to build the East West pipeline, which could carry something like 5 million barrels per day (BPD) crude oil to a new port on the Red Sea at Yanbu. There were two main reasons for this. Tankers from Europe could take the Suez Canal and chop off about 5000 km round trip by filling up at Yanbu; and political uncertainty on the Gulf (Iran and Iraq were at war from 1980 to 1988) did not help safety of tankers in the Gulf. Hormuz, 50 years ago, was seen as a likely weak point in the event of political unrest. The Saudis saw this way back then but it appears to have taken our 'president' by surprise.
Ecology and Environment Inc. of Buffalo NY won the contract to ensure that the infrastructure being built at Yanbu would impact the local marine ecosystems (essentially corals and mangroves) as little as possible. They scoured the world to find the expertise they needed to fulfill that function and came up with three Brits: Alistair (air quality), Charles (coral reef biologist) and me (water quality). (We did laugh about the fact that an American company could not find Americans to do the work. And, in an intriguing twist, the guy who hired us was the engineer who installed Iran's first nuclear reactor under Eisenhower's Atoms For Peace program in the 1950s.) We conducted regular air quality and marine water quality surveys and monitored reef and mangrove health. We had one of the world’s premier reef biologists on our staff - I still see Charles’s name on UN reports on the worldwide state of coral reefs - and for basic safety reasons, you always SCUBA dive in pairs. Thus it was that I spent hours on coral reefs, as photographer, shark lookout and measuring rugosity (don’t ask) thinking - someone is paying me to do this!
And we watched the infrastructure - port, oil terminals, tanks, berms, refineries, anti-pollution measures - grow. It was all about the pipeline. 800 miles across the desert carrying crude oil. The last thing you do before putting a pipeline to use is to send the pig down. A Pipeline Inspection Gauge is propelled the length of the pipeline to inspect welds and to remove junk. The pig was inserted at the Saudi oilfield in the East and made its way slowly to us - I think it took several days - and arrived to great ceremony at Yanbu. I was there to watch its arrival. It was a pig day.
Ecology and Environment Inc. of Buffalo NY won the contract to ensure that the infrastructure being built at Yanbu would impact the local marine ecosystems (essentially corals and mangroves) as little as possible. They scoured the world to find the expertise they needed to fulfill that function and came up with three Brits: Alistair (air quality), Charles (coral reef biologist) and me (water quality). (We did laugh about the fact that an American company could not find Americans to do the work. And, in an intriguing twist, the guy who hired us was the engineer who installed Iran's first nuclear reactor under Eisenhower's Atoms For Peace program in the 1950s.) We conducted regular air quality and marine water quality surveys and monitored reef and mangrove health. We had one of the world’s premier reef biologists on our staff - I still see Charles’s name on UN reports on the worldwide state of coral reefs - and for basic safety reasons, you always SCUBA dive in pairs. Thus it was that I spent hours on coral reefs, as photographer, shark lookout and measuring rugosity (don’t ask) thinking - someone is paying me to do this!
And we watched the infrastructure - port, oil terminals, tanks, berms, refineries, anti-pollution measures - grow. It was all about the pipeline. 800 miles across the desert carrying crude oil. The last thing you do before putting a pipeline to use is to send the pig down. A Pipeline Inspection Gauge is propelled the length of the pipeline to inspect welds and to remove junk. The pig was inserted at the Saudi oilfield in the East and made its way slowly to us - I think it took several days - and arrived to great ceremony at Yanbu. I was there to watch its arrival. It was a pig day.
