The Dhahran residential camp is a private company compound, protected by armed guards, within which only Saudi Aramco employees and their dependents may reside.

It is located near the grounds of the former US consulate[3][non-primary source needed] as well as the Dhahran military airbase, which formerly housed the domestic and international air terminals for the Eastern Province.

Due to the ongoing Saudization of the workforce, along with a drive to recruit from less far afield, Western expatriates make up fewer than 5% of employees, both in the company as a whole and in the Dhahran residential community.

After several decades of Saudization, many Saudi families now live on the compound, although cultural rules within it are still more liberal (e.g. English is the common language, western clothing is normalized).

The community is also unusual demographically in that all residents of Dhahran are either employees of Saudi Aramco or their dependents; consequently, several age demographics are under-represented; 15- to 25-year-olds (Saudi Aramco provides no university for employees' dependents so many leave for schools elsewhere) and persons aged 60+ (retirees leave the company).

As the centre of the nation's oil industry, Dhahran has access to transport infrastructure linking it to Bahrain, Riyadh and Kuwait.

Dhahran airport originally consisted of three sections: the old King Fahd Air Terminal for regular passengers, separate facilities for Aramco corporate use (Aramco formerly had its own passenger airplanes offering international air service for employees until the early '60s), and the Dhahran Airfield, an airfield operated by the U.S. from 1946 until 1962.

Today, King Fahd International Airport (DMM) serves the entire metropolitan area of Dhahran, Dammam, Khobar, Qatif and Al-Thuqbah.

Although rail service in Saudi Arabia plays a much more minor role today than 50 years ago, an industrial railroad with a station adjacent to Dhahran still exists, linking it to the capital Riyadh.

The EXPEC, Engineering and Tower buildings are connected by a tunnel to help employees avoid exposure to the extremes of the Saudi climate.

Beyond the compound, the greater Dhahran area is home to the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), a national technical institution built just outside the compound's original perimeter fence, and the Dhahran Industrial Training Center (ITC), which includes the campus of the selective College Preparatory Center for promising Saudi secondary students preparing for study abroad.

All papers published locally are either owned by Saudi Aramco or special community interest groups (SIGs), and they are all free.

Most Saudi Aramco-owned papers and magazines are available online at Aramco's official website (anyone may request a hard-copy subscription free of charge).

Like the publications listed above, the company's highly regarded Aramco World magazine of Middle Eastern and Islamic cultural topics can be subscribed to worldwide for free.

The main attraction of Channel 3 was that it aired well made documentaries concerning Middle Eastern history, culture, cuisine and environment.

The demise of Channel 3 was due to the fact that Dhahran residents started to get other choices for English language entertainment and news television.

In the early 1990s the first Persian Gulf War gave Dhahran residents the ability to pick up the American Forces Network.

By the late 1990s, satellite television services were becoming more affordable and offering a wider selection of commercial news and entertainment programming that was less censored and more contemporary.