[oldvirginian]

I’ve known about sand being exported to the ME since the 80’s.
A neighbor got a job working in SA and was surprised to find them importing sand.
He brought back two bottles of sand. One beach, the other desert sand and let us compare them under his microscope.
I was stunned to see the smoothness of the desert sand while the beach sand was jagged and irregular. Desert sand was smooth because it was “polished” by being blown around in the sandstorms.
Because of it’s smoothness it was worthless as a binding agent in concrete.
Sand to Saudi Arabia
Coal to Newcastle

[Little Ray]

Thank you for letting us know about that!