Saudi Arabia’s National Water Company (NWC) is planning to build 8 million cubic metres of water storage facilities in the capital city of Riyadh, MEED’s Saudi Arabian Energy EPC Projects 2013 conference was told.

Yahya Al-Yousef, senior manager for asset services at NWC, told the conference on 24 April that the 8 million cubic metres of water storage would be contained in steel water tanks at five or six locations across Riyadh. Each site is expected to contain six or seven steel tanks with a capacity of 140,000 cubic metres.

In addition to the Riyadh water storage programme, NWC is also in the early stages of planning to build 6 million cubic metres of water storage tank facilities in Jeddah. The water storage schemes are scheduled to be fast-tracked by the government.

In June last year, NWC received bids from contractors to build four steel reservoirs in Mecca with a combined capacity of 760,000 cubic metres. NWC is also negotiating with contractors to build a further 560,000 cubic metres of reservoir storage in Mecca. NWC invited a select group of companies to submit offers for the contract, which also comprises four reservoirs.

The projects are part of NWC’s plans to spend SR50bn ($13.3bn) on water and wastewater projects from 2013-17.