Jordan has signed an agreement with European Investment Bank (EIB) and Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) for the first phase of the Red Sea-Dead Sea water conveyance scheme.

Under the agreement, EIB and AFD will conduct three studies involving economic and financial analysis of the water sharing scheme.

The project is intended to increase desalination capacity for Israel, Palestine and Jordan, while conveying the waste product, brine, to revitalise the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is retreating at a rate of more than 1 metre a year due to overexploitation of the Jordan River and phosphate extraction.

MEED reported in February that the Jordan Valley Authority (JVA) had invited prequalification entries for the scheme.

The project is planned to be developed on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. The contractor will finance 70 per cent and 30 per cent of funding will come through the governments of Israel and Jordan, according to Nabil Zoubi, project manager for the scheme at the JVA.

The first phase involves a 65-80 million-cubic metre-a-year (cm/y) desalination plant, reservoirs, pumping stations and 180 kilometres of pipelines.

Israel will purchase 50 million cm/y, while the remainder will be consumed by Jordan. Israel will in turn release 50 million cm/y of Jordan River water to Jordan and sell an additional 20-30 million cm/y to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The Washington-based World Bank has completed multiple studies, but questions remain over the environmental impact of introducing brine into the unique Dead Sea ecosystem.

The scheme has been planned for more than a decade, but political obstacles make cooperation with Israel difficult. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and peace talks have made little progress since the early 1990s.

The JVA signed a bilateral agreement with Israel in February 2015 to allow the project to move forward.