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Spanish infrastructure company Acciona said on Wednesday that its consortium with China’s SEPCOIII has been awarded the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract for the 570,000 cubic metres per day Jubail 3B reverse osmosis-based (RO) desalination plant in Saudi Arabia.
The plant is planned to start operations in the first quarter of 2024, Acciona said in a press statement.
The award of the EPC contract for the Jubail 3B Independent Water Plant (IWP) to the Acciona-SEPCOIII consortium was reported by Zawya Projects in August 2021.
The plant will be located in the industrial city of Jubail on the Arabian Gulf coast, around 100 kilometres from Dammam, and will supply potable water to two million people in the cities of Riyadh and Qassim, the statement said.
According to the statement, Acciona will undertake the construction of the entire RO system, including the civil works and the pumping of raw water. The project will include storage tanks for daily production, as well as a solar photovoltaic power plant to reduce the consumption of power from the grid. The EPC contract will also include the construction of 58 kilometres of power lines, an electricity substation and the associated marine works.
In June, Zawya Projects had reported the signing of 25-year BOO (Build-Own-Operate) project agreement between Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC) and the consortium of Engie, Nesma and Ajlan for Jubail 3B. The financial closure of the project, estimated to cost $692 million, was announced in October.
Acciona said Jubail 3B will increase the company’s reverse osmosis desalination portfolio in Saudi Arabia to around 2.37 million m3/day.
The company had previously built the 100,000 m3/day Jubail RO4 desalination plant on the same site for Marafiq.
In December 2020, Saudi Arabia’s Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) had awarded the partnership of Acciona-RTCC a design and construction contract worth $384 million for the 400,000 m3/day Shuqaiq 1 desalination plant.
Earlier, in 2019, a consortium which included Acciona was awarded 25-year, €530 million ($594 million) contract for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the 450,000 m3/day Shuqaiq 3 desalination plant in the same area.
Acciona was awarded a €460 million ($516 million) turnkey contract for the Al Khobar RO2 plant in Khobar, on the east coast of the country in April 2020. The company said the facility will have a capacity of just over 630,000 m3/day, making it one of the biggest in the country and the largest reverse osmosis plant in the world built under the EPC modality in a single phase.
In July 2018, the company was also awarded a contract for around €200 million ($224 million) for the construction and start-up of the 210,000 m3/day Al Khobar RO1 desalination plant, located near Al Khobar RO2. The plant’s construction was completed in January 2021.
SDC Deal Number: 3955073158
(Writing by SA Kader; Editing by Anoop Menon)
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© ZAWYA 2021
