Illustrative photo of a desert with a camel and 2 people by Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash
By AFP - Agence France Presse
French-led group signs major deal for water-stressed Jordan
Jordan, one of the world's driest countries, on Sunday signed an agreement with French-led investors to build one of the world's largest desalination plants.
Jordan's official news agency, Petra, called the deal the country's biggest infrastructure project, which Prime Minister Jafar Hassan told parliament was valued at more than $5 billion.
Meridiam, the French infrastructure specialist, is leading the project in partnership with SUEZ, Orascom Construction, and VINCI Construction Grands Projets.
On its website, Meridiam said the project would provide more than 300 million cubic meters of drinking water to Amman and Aqaba, serving more than three million people.
Meridiam said this project will increase the total annual supply of domestic water available to households by almost 60% and will also include around 445 kilometers of pipelines to transport the desalinated water from the Red Sea.
Jordan's Minister of Water and Irrigation, Raed Abu al-Saud, emphasized the project's “transformative potential,” noting that it would “mark a significant change in Jordan's water security landscape,” according to Petra.
The prime minister said last month that the project would take around four years to complete.
This comes after Jordan withdrew from a plan that would have connected the Dead Sea and the Red Sea via pipelines in Jordan.
In 2013, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians signed a memorandum of understanding on this project, which included plans to build a desalination plant in the Red Sea.
But against a backdrop of popular anger in Jordan due to the stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the then water minister Mohammad al-Najjar said in June 2021 that the Red Sea-Dead Sea project was “now a thing of the past”.
kt-it/smw
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