Spain’s Acciona has won the contract to build a seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant as part of Qatar’s Facility E independent water and power project (IWPP) in Ras Abu Fontas.

The integrated facility’s water desalination package will have a capacity of 110 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD), while the power generation plant will have the capacity to generate 2,415MW of electricity.

According to a source close to the project, the contract Acciona won is part of the overall engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) package of the Facility E IWPP, which South Korea’s Samsung C&T will implement.

Julio De La Rosa Jurado, Acciona Agua Middle East director, confirmed the award in a social media post on 26 November, the day after Qatar state utility General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa) awarded the contract to develop and operate the Facility E IWPP project to the sole bidder led by Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation on 25 November.

Sumitomo leads a consortium that comprises fellow Japanese utility developer Shikoku Electric, Seoul-headquartered Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development Corporation (KIND) and Korea Southern Power Company (Kospo).

Samsung C&T has confirmed that the project’s EPC package is valued at $2.8bn. The total project cost is roughly $3.7bn.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Power will supply the gas turbines for the power plant, as MEED reported.

The four developer consortium members, along with Qatar Electricity & Water Company (QEWC) and QatarEnergy (QE), will establish a project company.

According to Sumitomo, the equity distribution between the project company shareholders is:

• Sumitomo Corporation: 17%
• Shikoku Electric: 11%
• Kospo: 6%,
• KIND: 6%
• QEWC: 55%
• QE: 5%

Project background

The contract to develop the Facility E IWPP was first tendered in 2019. The three teams that submitted bids for the contract in August 2020 were:

• Engie (France) / Mitsui (Japan) / Yonden (Shikoku Electric, Japan)
• Sumitomo / Kansai Electric (Japan)
• Marubeni / Kyushu Electric (Japan)

The original plan was for the Facility E IWPP to have a power generation capacity of about 2,300MW and a desalination component of 100MIGD once fully operational.

Kahramaa revised the power plant’s design capacity to 2,600MW and sought alternative prices from bidders.

Kahramaa eventually cancelled and reissued the tender in September 2023.

MEED understands that the new target commercial operation date for the Facility E IWPP project has been moved to 2029.

The state utility’s transaction advisory team includes UK-headquartered PwC and Clyde & Co as financial and legal advisers, respectively, led by Belgrade-headquartered Energoprojekt as technical adviser.

Facility E is Qatar’s fifth IWPP scheme. Completed and operational IWPPs include three projects in Ras Laffan – known as Facilities A, B and C – and Facility D in Umm Al-Houl.

Awarded in 2015 and completed in 2018, Facility D was developed by a Japanese consortium of Mitsubishi Corporation and Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). South Korea’s Samsung C&T was the EPC contractor.