Located near to the Suez Canal, it was originally a staging point on the spice and incense route from Egypt and Yemen to the Mediterranean. Yanbu became an important city from an economical point of view after becoming one of the stations for a pipeline carrying liquefied natural gas from east to west. Another accelerating factor in its industrial development was the King Abdulaziz road. The city, divided into three parts as Al-Balad, Al-Nakheel and Al-Sina’iya, is now an important petrochemical export center of Red Sea.
