Saudi Arabia’s Water & Electricity Company (WEC) has issued request for proposals (RFPs) to prequalified companies for the planned West Dammam independent sewage treatment plant (ISTP).

The 10 groups which have been invited to participate in the tender are:

• Acciona Agua (Spain)
• Cobra (Spain) / Saur (France) / CWC (local)
• FCC (Spain) / Aqualia (Spain) / Nesma (local)
• Marubeni (Japan)
• Mitsui (Japan) / Miahona (local)
• Mowah (local) / Metito (UAE) / Orascom Construction (Egypt)
• Samsung Engineering (South Korea)
• Saudi Industrial Services Company (local) / Amiantit (local) / China Gezhouba Group Corporation / International Water Distribution Company (local)
• Suez (France) / Al-Khorayef (local)
• Veolia (France) / Marafiq (Saudi Arabia)

The planned West Dammam ISTP will have a capacity of 350,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d).

MEED reported in November that WEC had invited companies to submit expressions of interest for the Dammam scheme, which will be developed under a public-private partnership (PPP) model. WEC received 64 expressions of interest for the planned sewage treatment plant (STP).

The project will be developed under a 25-year sewage treatment agreement (STA), under which the sewage capacity will be provided by the National Water Company (NWC). WEC’s obligations under the STA will be guaranteed by a credit support agreement from the Saudi government.

WEC is also planning to develop the planned Jeddah 2 airport STP under a PPP model, which will have a total treatment capacity of 500,000 cm/d. The new ITSP will be located adjacent to the existing 350,000-cm/d Jeddah airport STP.

The advisory team working on the Dammam and Jeddah airport 2 ISTP projects is led by Japan’s Mizuho Bank (financial adviser), and also includes UK-based Atkins, owned by Canada’s SNC Lavalin (technical adviser), and US-based law firm White & Case (legal adviser). MEED reported in September last year that the advisory team had been selected for a handful of planned PPP sewage treatment plants and related projects.