Saudia Arabia's King starts production at Jubail II desalination plant, the World's Largest Desalination Plant

Saudia Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz pressed a button on 29 April 2009 to start water production at the 800,000 m³/d Jubail II desalination plant, part of the world's largest independent water and power project (IWPP).

The 23-year build-own-operate-transfer IWPP is being carried out by a consortium of Suez Energy and ACWA under a US$ 3.4 billion contract. The desalination EPC is Veolia subsidiary Sidem, which has employed multiple-effect desalination (MED) technology on a larger scale than ever used previously. 

Saudi Arabia has always had an acute fresh water shortage problem. The problem has been so severe that a proposal was once considered to literally tow an ice burg from Antarctica all to way to the Kingdom for use as fresh water.

The practicality of constructing desalination plants to extract salt and other minerals from sea water became a much more practical plan, and 27 have now been constructed in the Kingdom, supplying 70 percent of the country's drinking water as well as more than 28 million megawatts of electricity. A new desalination plant, hailed as being the world's largest, has now been completed in the new Jubail II Industrial Zone in the Kingdom's Eastern Province.