Water as a Precious Resource

Every living thing needs water to survive. It is one of our most precious resources. But although water covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, less than 1% of it is fresh water we can drink. In fact, one in nine people in the world has no access to safe drinking water.
 
We use water in so many ways - to grow food, make clothes, fight fires, clean things, create power and transport goods around the world. There is enough water on the planet to sustain the current population but it is distributed unevenly and too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed.
 
We need to be smart about the way we use and manage water. Especially in hot, dry areas like the Sultanate of Oman, which is 80% desert.  With so many people and such little rain, providing enough drinking water is a challenge. So we turned to the sea, using a process called desalination.

To be able to meet the projected demand for potable water to the 375,000 inhabitants of the Sharqiyah region in Oman, a second RO desalination plant is currently being built next to the existing one in Sur. This extension project with additional 51,000 m3 and 5 years of operations was signed in June 2014 and will be developed on a BOO basis. 
 

Built in 2007, our desalination plant in Sur is helping to provide this vital resource to the local area:

• It provides drinking water to 375,000 people in the region of Sharqiyah
• It is the largest beach well catchment in the world – collecting over 180,000m3 of water each day
• It produces 83,500m3 of water each day – this is the same as 33 Olympic swimming pools

In October 2014, the plant hit the milestone of producing 100 million cubic meters of drinking water:
Press Release