Many Have Fled, but Some U.S. Workers Reluctant to Leave Gulf

They came because the weather was warm, the wages were good and the income taxes were negligible. Besides, where else could you work in the exotic desert of Arabia and still drive your station wagon to Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch?

But now, the thousands of American contract workers who during the past four decades have built eastern Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing region into a replica of Small Town, U.S.A., are thinking about hitting the road in earnest--home, that is.

With the possibility of war just three hours up the highway at the Kuwaiti border, the waiting list for flights from Dhahran is approaching 1,000. Hundreds of families went home for the Christmas holidays and never came back; the rest are grimly setting up safe rooms in their houses to protect against a chemical weapons attack.

Those who remain are waiting to see what happens next.

Consider Bob Frith, a geophysicist at the Saudi oil-producing giant, Aramco, who spent part of last weekend waiting in a line for a gas mask.

“I keep getting phone calls from my wife questioning my sanity,” he said. “I was home with my family during the Christmas holidays, and I was questioning my sanity. But then again, this is where my home is; this is where my job is.”

Americans still hold many of the high-tech design and exploration positions at the formerly U.S.-owned Aramco, and American companies--including such Southern California-based firms as Fluor Daniels and Parsons Corp.--hold major contracts on Aramco’s massive, $20-billion expansion project that will boost oil production to 10 million barrels a day.

McDonnell Douglas and other defense contractors maintain millions of dollars in military hardware at Dhahran’s King Abdul Aziz Air Base. And hundreds of smaller American companies provide everything from piping to electronic circuits to keep the oil pumping.

Tensions between the American workers and their bosses--whose interest lies with keeping the employees on the job--have been rising since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in early August.

In the first days after the invasion, thousands of American families fled Saudi Arabia, lowering the American population in the kingdom’s eastern province to 4,500 from 12,000.

Many came back as U.S. and other multinational troops began pouring in to fortify Saudi Arabia’s borders. By the end of the first week of January, the population was back up to 6,800--but then the situation in the Persian Gulf began to disintegrate again.

Although most companies have evacuated dependents who wanted to leave and others have plans to move operations to Jidda, on the Red Sea coast, if hostilities break out, most of the Americans remaining appear determined to stay.

Lucia Rawls, a government affairs adviser at Aramco, had a packed suitcase under her living room coffee table throughout August. But she finally unpacked it in September when she got tired of having to pull her toothpaste from the valise every night.

She still keeps a small bag packed with her legal papers, photographs and sterling silver next to her bed. But gradually, she said, she has started rehanging pictures on the walls.

“I decided I wasn’t going to live like a refugee. I’m just going to keep up with my regular life,” said Rawls, who admits that she had second thoughts about returning when she went home to the United States for the Christmas holidays.

“I decided that in the worst case, if the danger actually comes to Dhahran, OK, I’ll give it all up and leave,” she said. “But to come back was the only element of control I have about the situation. I can’t control Saddam. I can’t control Bush. I can’t control policy. But I can choose to come back, and I can decide when to leave.”

Fluor Arabia and Saudi Arabia Parsons said recruiting staff for the Aramco expansion project has been difficult.

“It presents a puzzle. We continue to do the best we can, but we are having trouble getting people to come over here,” said Reneld Furness, assistant program director at Parsons. “The British Embassy and the American Embassy have published travel advisories, and people read those and they say, ‘We’ll wait till it’s over.’ ”

Jan Powell, president of Fluor Arabia, said the company has distributed gas masks and adopted emergency evacuation plans. “But basically, we’re continuing with our projects as usual,” he said.

“There’s a whole range of expectations,” he added. “I think the best description of it is they come to work in the morning and they’re nervous, once they get to work they stop thinking about it and once they go home they’re nervous again. The level of anxiety fluctuates every day.”

Many of Aramco’s 2,500 American employees, who have been receiving a 15% “situational allowance” over their base pay since September, have been upset that the company did not begin issuing its 80,000 gas masks until last week.

American workers whose families have left Saudi Arabia are also complaining that they are receiving no extra pay, beyond the 15% bonus, for maintaining two households.

The controversy follows a series of stormy conflicts between employees and management early in the crisis, when disputes erupted over the evacuation of dependents and employees.

“They have essentially been giving out the party line that it’s business as usual, everything’s fine, come on back,” said one American worker. “No one in their right mind can say this is business as usual, when a good part of the work force is out here standing in line waiting for gas masks.”

Added an American who has tried to mediate the disputes: “There’s a gulf between Aramco management and Aramco workers that’s wide and getting worse because they cannot effectively communicate.”

An Aramco official said that although half the American employees’ dependents left in August, about 10% have returned. According to unofficial reports, about 900 Aramco employees left the country in August.

“Despite all this, I find people are more relaxed than they used to be in August,” the official said. “Some of the people who were away on vacation are trying to delay coming back. They’re making excuses. They’re saying, ‘We have an illness in the family.’ They’re all waiting for this deadline to pass, and they’re thinking of coming back in February.”

Those still in the country filled the commissary on the Aramco compound last weekend, stocking up on canned goods, pasta, juices and bottled water. Many employees began taping up windows and storing supplies.

“I’ve got a bathroom in the house with food, water, a radio. I can seal it up very quickly, and I don’t use the air conditioner at night any more,” said Graeme McCone, a computer programmer. “I picked up a gas mask because I don’t see any reason not to pick up a gas mask. It’s a precaution. It’s like a seat belt in your car. You don’t anticipate having an accident, but you wear it because it’s there.”

Roger Mortlock, a materials handling engineer for a small company in Dhahran, went through the same process of stocking up supplies in the house--then hid them all when his family came to visit at Christmas. “There’s no way I’m going to let them see that,” he said.

Frith, the Aramco geophysicist, moved a little further up the gas mask line and shook his head.

“Obviously, I miss my family, and this is not exactly what I had in mind when we came overseas,” he said. “But you know, when we first arrived, the war between Iran and Iraq was going, and we kind of got used to that. Now we have this. Unfortunately, the longer you stay, the more blase you become. Things just don’t affect you anymore.”