Saudi Arabia gas-reduction steel facility

Saudi natural gas as steel reductant — sidesteps coal-and-coke entirely. Imported iron ore + domestic natural gas + sovereign capital = integrated steelmaking. Part of the road-to-industrialization sequence (steel → ships → autos).

Take the Koreans. In the 1990s, I was the POSCO Professor. POSCO was the Korean steel company. The president of Korea took one of his colonels and said, "Mr. Park, I want you to go and start a steel company." Park went and talked to U.S. Steel. U.S. Steel sold them the technology, and they built POSCO Steel in Korea, which by 1997 was the world's largest steel company. From the early 1970s, in twenty-five years they became the largest steel company in the world, until the Chinese passed them by a long shot. But that was at the backing of the government of Korea to build what was, at that time, probably a ten- or fifteen-billion-dollar plant. They built a couple of them in Korea — Korea doesn't need but a couple. Saudi Arabia's got lots of natural gas, so what do they do with their natural gas? They build a gas reduction facility. They don't use blast furnaces — they use all the natural gas that they can't get out of the country any other economical way, they import iron ore, and they make steel. Because steel is fundamental to a growing economy. That's what the Japanese did after World War Two — they built steel companies and then they built shipyards, they became the largest shipbuilder in the world. Other people have passed them by, but people are all using that model.