Oman Power & Water Procurement Company (OPWP) is planning to award the contract to develop the Qurayyat independent water project (IWP) by the end of November.

Speaking at MEED’s Oman Projects conference in Muscat on 27 October, Ahmed al-Jahdhami, chief executive officer, OPWP, said that the company was in the final stages of the selection process and was expecting to award the contract “within the next month.”

OPWP received bids from six groups in early September for the contract, which will involve developing the planned 44 million gallon-a-day (g/d), 200,000 cubic metre-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 has set a commercial start date of March 2017 for the plant.

The groups that submitted bids are led by:

• Abengoa (Spain)
• Cobra Instalaciones Y Servicios (Spain)/Tedagua (Spain)
• Hyflux (Singapore)/Bahwan Group (local)
• Itochu (Japan)/Suez Degremont (France)/Muscat Overseas (local)/Douglas OHI (local)
• Sumitomo Corporation (Japan)/Malakoff (Malaysia)/Doosan (South Korea)
• Acwa Power (Saudi Arabia)/Valoriza (Spain)

The project is part of the sultanate’s aim to boost capacity in the Main Interconnected System (MIS), the sultanate’s main grid, and will boost capacity by 107 million million imperial gallons a day (MIGD).