Jordan Receives Two Bids for Red Sea Water Desalination Project

Jordan received offers from two groups of companies for a project that would desalinate water from the Red Sea and help replenish the Dead Sea, a spokesman at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation said.

Two of the six groups that were qualified in 2011 to compete submitted technical and financial offers, Adnan Zu’bi said by telephone from Amman. The ministry will start talks in April with the two groups, which he declined to identify.

A statement posted on the ministry’s website indicated that the six qualified groups were a venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. (8058) and Acciona SA (ANA) of Spain, Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power International, Jordan Red Sea Group, Egypt’s Orascom Construction Industries, South Korea’s Samsung C&T Corp. (000830) and China’s Sinohydro Group Ltd. (SHYDRZ)

The project involves extracting 1.2 billion cubic meters of water from the Red Sea, of which 930 million cubic meters will be desalinated and the rest will be channeled into the shrinking Dead Sea, according to the ministry’s statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mohammad Tayseer in Amman, through the Dubai newsroom at mtayseer@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Voss at sev@bloomberg.net