The Oman Power & Water Procurement Company (OPWP) has prequalified seven groups to bid submit proposals for its Qurayyat independent water project (IWP).

The planned 44 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD), 200,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d), desalination plant will be located in Qurayyat, just south of Muscat. Under the terms of the proposed project, OPWP will purchase the potable water produced by the plant under a water purchase agreement (WPA) for a period of 20 years.

OPWP prequalified seven of the 12 groups that had submitted prequalification entries in October last year. The prequalified consortiums contain the following companies:

• Abengoa (Spain)
• Cobra Instalaciones Y Servicios (Spain)
• GS INIMA (Spain)
• Hyflux (Singapore)
• Itochu (Japan)
• Sumitomo Corporation (Japan)
• Valoriza Agua (Spain)

OPWP is aiming to select a bidder and sign all of the project agreements by the end of 2014, and has set a start-date for commercial operation date of March 2017.

Oman’s utility procurement company is aiming to increase the sultanate’s current desalination capacity from 670,000 cm/d to 1,300,000 cm/d by 2020.

MEED recently reported that OPWP was planning to tender contracts for five independent water projects (IWPs) in 2014. In its latest 7-year statement, covering the years 2014 to 2020, OPWP has set out plans to issue tenders for five IWPs before the end of 2014, which will add a total capacity of 116 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD) to the sultanate’s desalination sector when fully commissioned.

The majority of the new capacity will be provided through three new projects located in the Muscat Interconnected System (MIS), the sultanate’s main grid, and will boost capacity by 107MIGD.