At the Barka 5 independent water project (IWP) in Oman, the Spanish water treatment company GS Inima has announced that it has obtained funding to construct a 6.3 megawatt peak (MWp) solar photovoltaic (PV) plant.
Cofides, a Spanish public-private organization “that promotes the internationalization and sustainability of companies by providing financing for investment projects,” would supply the funding, according to a statement from GS Inima.
In November 2020, GS Inima was chosen to be the Barka 5 IWP’s owner-operator. The plant was the company’s first project in the Middle East and treats 100,000 cubic meters of water per day using reverse osmosis technology.
In June of last year, the Barka 5 IWP began commercial operations. It supplies treated water to Oman’s Nama Power & Water Procurement Company (Nama PWP) to service over 800,000 people in the Batinah, Dakhiliyah, and Muscat districts.
Up until 2044, the self-consumption solar PV project is expected to supply about 11% of Barka 5’s energy needs. It will be developed, constructed, run, and maintained by GS Inima on a 40,000-square-meter plot of land.
In its statement, GS Inima stated that “the integration of clean energy into infrastructures like Barka 5 enables the optimization of resource use, the reduction of the carbon footprint, and progress towards a more environmentally friendly energy model.”
In addition, GS Inima recently declared that it has achieved one million man-hours without lost time events at the Ghubrah 3 IWP project, which is now being developed in collaboration with Saudi Arabia’s Aljomaih Energy & Water Company and local contractor Sogex Oman.
The consortium’s leader, GS Inima, owns 52% of the Ghubrah 3 IWP project, with Aljomaih and Sogex Oman each owning 24%.
In January of this year, the consortium completed the project’s financial close. A consortium of both domestic and foreign banks, including the local Bank Dhofar, the UK-based Standard Chartered, and the Export-Import Bank of South Korea (Kexim), agreed to contribute $370 million in project finance investment.
In May 2023, at least two years after the project’s 20-year water-purchase agreement was signed in 2021, Nama PWP, the project’s offtaker, formally inked a contract with the GS Inima-led consortium to develop and run the 300,000 cubic meters per day desalination plant.
As the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor for the project, GS Inima is developing and constructing the Ghubrah 3 IWP complex. In the first quarter of 2027, the plant is anticipated to begin commercial operations.
Source : MEED
