Oman’s Majis Industrial Services has invited contractors to submit expressions of interest (EoI) for a contract to build a 28 million-litre-a-day (l/d) desalination plant at its Sohar Industrial Port Area.

The reverse osmosis (RO), seawater desalination plant will mainly provide water for the future purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) facilities planned at the port.

The scope of work will involve the design and build of a seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant, which will consist of seven trains with a capacity of 4 million l/d, membrane pre-treatment and construction of a 40,000-cubic-metre storage tank. The work will include all engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) works and all required civil, electrical and instrumentation works.

The contractor will also provide operation and maintenance (O&M) of the facility for a period of two years following commissioning.

The SWRO will be the second RO plant Majis has developed at the Sohar site. The company already has a 4.4 million-imperial-gallon-a-day (MIGD) plant at the industrial development. In April, Majis invited companies to submit EoIs for O&M for the existing plant.

As part of plans to boost desalination capacity in the sultanate, the Oman Power & Water Procurement Company (OPWP) aims to tender contracts for five independent water projects (IWPs) in 2014.

In its latest seven-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 gallons a day (g/d) to the sultanate’s desalination sector when fully commissioned.

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