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Spanish contracting firm and utility investor Acciona has been awarded a contract to design and build a seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant as part of Qatar’s Facility E independent water and power project (IWPP) in Ras Abu Fontas.

According to the company, the plant will have a capacity of 500 million litres a day, equivalent to supplying 2 million people with drinkable water, and has a budget of around $500m (€475m).

MEED previously reported that the integrated facility’s water desalination package will have a capacity of 110 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD), while the power generation plant will have the capacity to generate 2,415MW of electricity.

The contract Acciona won is part of the $2.8bn overall engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) package of the Facility E IWPP, which South Korea’s Samsung C&T will implement.

Japan's Sumitomo Corporation leads a consortium that will develop and operate the Facility E IWPP. The team includes fellow Japanese utility developer Shikoku Electric, Seoul-headquartered Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development Corporation (KIND) and Korea Southern Power Company (Kospo).

The total project cost is roughly $3.7bn.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Power will supply the gas turbines for the power plant.

The four developer consortium members, along with Qatar Electricity & Water Company (QEWC) and QatarEnergy (QE), will establish a project company.

According to Sumitomo, the equity distribution between the project company shareholders is:

• Sumitomo Corporation: 17%
• Shikoku Electric: 11%
• Kospo: 6%,
• KIND: 6%
• QEWC: 55%
• QE: 5%

MEED understands that the new target commercial operation date for the Facility E IWPP project has been moved to 2029. 

According to Acciona, Qatar achieved its first milestone in reverse osmosis technology at its Ras Abu Fontas 3 plant, with a capacity of 165,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d).

It is understood that Acciona also built the Umm Al-Houl 1 and 2 desalination plants in Doha, which each have a production capacity of 284,000 cm/d.

The state utility’s transaction advisory team includes UK-headquartered PwC and Clyde & Co as financial and legal advisers, respectively, led by Belgrade-headquartered Energoprojekt as technical adviser.

Facility E is Qatar’s fifth IWPP scheme. Completed and operational IWPPs include three projects in Ras Laffan – known as Facilities A, B and C – and Facility D in Umm Al-Houl.

Awarded in 2015 and completed in 2018, Facility D was developed by a Japanese consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). South Korea’s Samsung C&T was the EPC contractor.

Related read: Facility E award marks key milestone