The alarm bell sounded the end of the lunch break here one November afternoon, and suddenly thousands of workers— on foot, on bicycles and in buses — streamed in, seemingly from out of nowhere, and jolted this huge construction site to life.

Amid a forest of cranes, towers and beams rising from the desert, more than 38,000 workers from China, India, Turkey and beyond have been toiling for two years in unforgiving conditions - often in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees - to complete one of the world’s largest petrochemical plants in record time. By the end of the year, this massive city of steel at the edge of the Red Sea will take its place as a cog of globalisation: plastics produced here will be used to make televisions in Japan, cellphones in China and thousands of other products to be sold in the US and Europe. Construction costs at the plant, which spreads over eight square miles, have doubled to $10 billion because of shortages in materials and labor. The amount of steel being used is 10 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower.

“I’ve worked on many big things in my life, but I’ve never worked on anything this big,” an American project manager mused during a bus tour of the project, called Petro Rabigh, a joint venture of the state-run oil company Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical of Japan.

Size isn’t the only consideration. The project is Saudi Arabia’s boldest bet yet that this oil-rich kingdom can transform itself into an industrial powerhouse. The plant is part of a $500-billion investment program to build new cities, create millions of jobs and diversify the economy away from petroleum exports over the next two decades.

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