Sohar is Oman’s industrial port: a refinery and petrochemical cluster, a metals and minerals cluster and a tank terminal trade sharing one deepwater quay on the Batinah coast. This page is for the plant, terminal, inspection and HSE people deciding what a worker may carry across a site where hydrocarbon vapour and heavy mineral dust sit a few hundred metres apart. Often searched for as an “explosion proof phone”, the IS-04Z1 uses intrinsic safety as its protection concept.
Launching Q4 2026 · certification in progress
Sohar Port and Freezone sits on the Gulf of Oman about 200 km north west of Muscat, outside the Strait of Hormuz, which is a large part of why it was built where it is. The port carries three distinct clusters. The petrochemical one is built around the OQ refinery, its aromatics plant and the Liwa Plastics complex, with methanol production and independent chemical tank terminals alongside. The metals cluster runs an aluminium smelter, a direct reduction steel plant and an iron ore pelletising facility with its own ore terminal. Behind both sits the free zone and the industrial estate. Crews and contractors move between them, and a shutdown pulls in a workforce from across the Sultanate.
The Batinah coast is humid and salt laden all year, and it gets hot enough in summer that shade planning is part of a work pack. Set against that, a device here has to handle both a hydrocarbon plant and a minerals operation, which are two very different kinds of dirty, and it has to survive a contractor population that changes with every turnaround.
Iron ore, coal, coke and alumina are handled in the open and on conveyors, and polymer dust sits on the other side of the estate. A Zone 21 dust design with IP68 sealing is what keeps a unit working through both, rather than through the cleaner of the two.
Hydrocracking, reforming and direct reduction all involve hydrogen rich service, which is gas group IIC. The ATEX marking target of II 2 G Ex ib IIC T4 is set at the strictest case on the estate so one fleet can cover the refinery, the polymer plants and the metals side.
Sohar is damp and salty year round rather than seasonally, which is harder on sealed equipment than dry desert heat. A rugged build is aimed at humidity and salt, and IP68 covers the washdowns the refinery and the quays both apply.
The refinery, the smelters and the terminals are separate sites inside one port estate, and a shift can touch more than one of them. A 4,000 mAh battery specified for a full shift and a body that never needs opening in the field are what carry a unit through that.
A shutdown at Sohar brings in a contractor population issued equipment for the duration of a scope. Android 16 with enterprise management enrols a lent fleet under one policy, restricts the camera and lets it be wiped and recovered at demobilisation.
An operator or an inspection technician covering the process area needs to record a reading, photograph a defect and reach the control room without carrying three items past the same gate. Four constellation GNSS and a 50 MP camera with phase detect autofocus turn what was found into a record that a corrosion engineer in Muscat can act on.
Methanol, product and chemical cargoes move across manifolds and hose connections with a vessel on the other end, and a disputed quantity or a damaged coupling has to be evidenced immediately. A handset that takes the washdown and sends the photograph from the berth settles that on the spot.
Pelletising, direct reduction and smelting put heavy dust, radiant heat and moving material handling equipment together. A device specified for Zone 21 dust as well as Zone 1 gas is the only way the same issued fleet crosses from the petrochemical side of the estate to the metals side.
Not yet. The IS-04Z1 is pre-launch with a Q4 2026 launch date, and IECEx, ATEX and NEC 500 certification are all still in progress, alongside Omani product conformity and TRA type approval for the radio. We will not supply a unit into a classified area before the certificate covering it exists.
We publish no figure while certification is running, because quoting one would imply a certainty we do not have. Send the quantity, the sites and the timing, and pre-launch pricing goes to you in writing against that configuration. Volume supply to Omani operators runs through a partner holding an active JSRS certificate, so pricing and channel are settled together.
No. Evaluation and documentation do not require it. JSRS becomes decisive when a supplier bids to an Omani oil and gas operator, which is why volume supply into Sohar is planned through a registered Omani partner rather than direct.
That is what specifying to the worst case is for: Zone 1 and Zone 21, gas group IIC, temperature class T4. Whether it covers a specific area is decided by your own hazardous area classification against the issued certificate, not by this page.
That is what a rugged build and IP68 sealing are for. It is also one of the reasons we would rather place an evaluation unit with a crew at Sohar for a full rotation than settle the argument from a datasheet.
An Ex certified device cannot be opened on site or serviced by a general workshop without invalidating its certification. Repair and battery replacement run through SAMS and the Omani partner it is appointing, with spares held within reach of Sohar and Muscat.
Tell us the site, the zone and gas group, and roughly how many handsets. The SAMS team replies by email with the datasheet and the certification schedule for Oman. The IS-04Z1 is pre-launch and certification is in progress, so there is no list price yet; indicative pricing is issued in writing against a stated quantity and site.
Tell us the zone, gas group and operator. We will send the datasheet and the certification schedule for your market.
