State water offtaker Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC) has received three bids from the private sector for the development of the Riyadh-Qassim independent water transmission pipeline (IWTP) project.

The bids were submitted by two consortiums and one individual company.

The first consortium comprises Saudi firms Al-Jomaih Energy & Water, Al-Khorayef Water & Power Technologies, AlBawani Capital and Buhur for Investment Company.

The second consortium comprises Bahrain/Saudi Arabia-based Lamar Holding, the UAE's Etihad Water & Electricity and China’s Shaanxi Construction Installation Group.

The third bid was submitted by Saudi Arabia's Vision Invest.

In August, MEED exclusively reported that SWPC had extended the bid submission deadline again for a contract to develop and operate the project.

The deadline for bids was 17 September.

The project will have a transmission capacity of 685,000 cubic metres a day. It will include a pipeline length of 859 kilometres (km) and a total storage capacity of 1.59 million cubic metres.

The scheme is the third independent water transmission pipeline (IWTP) contract to be tendered by Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC) since 2022.

The first two are the 150km Rayis-Rabigh IWTP, which is under construction, and the 603km Jubail-Buraydah IWTP, the contract for which was awarded to a team of Riyadh-based companies comprising Al-Jomaih Energy & Water, Nesma Group and Buhur for Investment Company.

Like the first two IWTPs, the Riyadh-Qassim IWTP project will be developed using a 35-year build-own-operate-transfer contracting model.

Commercial operations are expected to commence in the first quarter of 2030.