MUSAY'ID

also called Umm Sa'id town and port, Qatar, on the east coast of the Qatar Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf. It was established in 1949 as a tanker terminal by the Qatar Petroleum Company on an inhospitable, previously uninhabited site, along the sabkhah (salt flat) terrain characteristic of the coast. Qatar's onshore petroleum fields, the Dukhan formations, lie on the opposite (west) coast of the peninsula, along the Dawhat Salwa, the bay separating Qatar from the main landmass of Arabia. Because coral reefs at the mouths of the bay prevented access by oceangoing tankers, the company laid a pipeline, 49 mi (79 km) long, in the 1940s across the peninsula to Musay'id, where tank farms and an artificial deepwater port were built. The main administrative and engineering headquarters of the company are also located there. Musay'id, the only deepwater port in Qatar for more than 20 years, handled not only the export of oil but the import of basic construction and industrial equipment, as well as consumer goods. These imports, financed by petroleum revenues, were used in the conversion of the country from the economic level of subsistence to that of a modern industrial and commercial state. The opening of the deepwater port at the capital city of Doha in the early 1970s lessened dependence on Musay'id as a general port. Modern industrial development there includes a plant producing ammonia and nitrogen fertilizers and a fully automated flour mill. Pop. (1971 est.) 7,000.