In July 2018 the opening of Oman’s largest seawater desalination plant on the coast west of Seeb marked a major step forward for the water utility sector. Completed in less than 30 months at a cost of $300m, the Barka IV independent water project (IWP) has a capacity of 281,000 cu metres per day. The Barka Desalination Company is a consortium...
As the first step in a series of planned privatisations, 2019 should see the partial sale of two government-owned electricity companies: Oman Electricity Transmission Company (OETC) and the Muscat Electricity Distribution Company (MEDC). The motivations for the sell-off strategy are many, ranging from efforts to improve operational efficiency...
To what extent can public-private partnership (PPP) projects play a role in meeting the future demand for water and power?
With the utilities sector continuing its long-term shift towards privatisation, these are changing times for power, water and waste in the sultanate. The year ahead will see further private sector participation in the country’s electricity transmission and distribution networks, while a number of new desalination projects will also get under...
The sultanate’s continuing efforts to boost extraction, develop greenfields and refine its processing capacity are largely intended to support trade links that ultimately see the vast majority of its oil consumed far afield from Oman itself. According to data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), of the 265.5m barrels...
In April 2018 the foundation was laid for one of the sultanate’s largest engineering ventures – the $7bn integrated refinery at Duqm. Indeed, according to industry media, its construction will account for some 8% of Oman’s entire GDP in the years preceding its completion in 2022. The refinery will form a key part of the country’s overall oil...
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