Saudi Arabia plans to invest at least $40 billion over the next 20 years to meet the Kingdom's water needs, a Saudi official said on Monday. The investment estimate was “conservative,” Loay Musallam, head of privatization and deputy minister of planning and development at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Water and Electricity, told a power and water conference. A new national water company being set up to help boost the Kingdom's supplies will be operational this month, he added. Rapid economic growth fuelled by record oil export revenues is boosting demand for water across the Gulf region. Saudi Arabia is the world's top oil exporter. In a related development, the Middle East's renewable water availability will fall by 50 percent per capita over the next four decades, according to a report. Current consumption per capita is 1,100 cubic meters a year, which is expected to fall to 550 cubic meters a year by 2050. To expand water and wastewater capacity to meet high demands backed by population growth and economic expansion, Gulf countries have spent over $40 billion on building around 550 seawater desalination stations over the last 25 years; 393 plants in Saudi Arabia, 98 in UAE and 34 in Kuwait to provide nearly 85 percent of the Gulf's drinking water. “Over $159 billion is spent on power and $133 billion in water and waste-water management. The government can't keep up with the infrastructure whether it's power or water demands, so now they are getting people into having their own sustainable infrastructure,” David Heffernan, managing director of Septech, a water and wastewater infrastructure and engineering company, said. The UAE, as the third largest per capita water consumer in the world, has taken steps to curb the consumption. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has placed a slab tariff. “The community has to be more responsible in the way resources are used,” said Saeed Al-Tayer, managing director and CEO of Dewa. Developers in the region are making efforts to curb the impending shortage by constructing buildings that meet international conservation standards, under the UAE Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (Leed) directive based on the US' Green Building Council's standards. __
