Saudi Aramco has opened an underground storage facility in the city of Medina as part of Saudi Arabia's strategic storage program.
The Medina storage site receives petroleum products from the company’s Yanbu refinery through a 162 kilometer pipeline. The underground storage area includes storage caves for gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
The site also includes lubricating-oil storage, a power generation area, a product pumping station, a service area with an underground control building and its facilities, and surface support services.
This integration between Saudi Aramco facilities and the previously opened strategic storage sites in Riyadh, Jiddah and Abha have resulted in the ability to store the largest quantity of refined products underground.
In preparation for the project, the management of the program, in co-operation with Saudi Aramco and other agencies from outside Saudi Arabia, conducted research to determine the quality of the stored products. Results of those tests showed that stored products could maintain their specifications for more than five years.