In the rugged mountains near the mineral spring famous in the UAE as a local supplier of bottled water, Dolphin Energy is laying pipes to carry another precious resource – natural gas.
A gale is blowing grit everywhere and construction workers, their faces swathed in chequered cotton scarves, take shelter beside and sometimes within the 1.2-metre diameter steel pipe sections that are waiting to be laid in trenches lined with fine red sand. The sand is not locally sourced. It is trucked in from the dunes of the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah along rough mountain tracks.
As the pipe descends at an angle of about 25 degrees from the mountains to sea level, each 12-metre pipe section, weighing 5.5 tonnes, must be suspended chain-like from the one higher up. It is a remarkable feat of civil engineering and involves a lot of heavy equipment.
This is the most challenging section of a pipeline that is being built by Abu Dhabi