SR 11.3 bn desal plant deal awarded

A consortium including Samsung Engineering and Shanghai Electric have won an SR 11.3 billion deal to build a water desalination plant.
Saline Water Conversion Corp. awarded the Yanbu III plant deal to the two firms as well as to Saudi Al-Toukhi Co. for Industry, Trading and Contracting. The plant will have a capacity of 550,000 cubic meters per day of desalinated water and a power capacity of 2,500 MW, Reuters reported.
Water consumption in the Kingdom is already almost double the per capita global average and increasing at an ever faster rate with the rapid expansion of population and industrial development.
SWCC has said it plans to nearly double energy-intensive desalinated water production to almost 6 million cubic meters per day by the end of 2015.