Al-Jubail is one of the centers of the oil processing industry in Saudi Arabia. The city is located in the eastern part of the country, directly on the Gulf coast. To feed the black gold from the offshore oil field safely to the refinery on land, two parallel pipelines, each with a length of 3,048 meters, had to be laid beneath the seabed – the longest crossing ever to have been completed using the HDD technology until then.

The two pipeline routes were drilled from two sides. A Herrenknecht trailer rig type HK250T completed a third of the route starting from the refinery and going out to sea. The HK400M modular rig was put into operation on the causeway from where it created two thirds of the route towards the port. It completed both the subsequent reaming steps and the pull-back of the complete 3,048-meter-long pipeline along the entire route with absolute reliability – this, although the weight of the pipelines were around 1,500 tonnes, with diameters of 24 and 30 inches. To backup the pipeline pullback "in an emergency case", the Herrenknecht Pipe Thruster was on standby to provide extra push and pull force along the extremely long sections.