Water & Electricity Company (WEC) in Saudi Arabia has announced that 71 developer consortia have expressed interest in the independent water project (IWP) to be developed in Yanbu. This desalination project will use reverse osmosis (RO) seawater desalination technology that can generate up to 450,000cu/m per day of potable water. It will be installed near the town of Ar Rayyis (140 km west of Madinah), on Saudi’s Red Sea coast. 

WEC received interest from global and local companies including SNC-Lavalin, French groups Suez International, Veolia Middle East and Engie and Spanish Tecnicas Reunidas, Abengoa (Spain), as well as Sumitomio and JGC Corporation (Japan), Bechtel (US), Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (Korea), Fisia Italimpianti (Italy) Shanghai Electric Group (China) and two companies from India – Adani Infra (India) Limited and VA Tech Wabag. UAE’s Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and Utico apart from Orascom Construction (Egypt), have also expressed interest in the project.

WEC will sign a water purchase agreement for 25 years.