Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman receives the awards. (SPA)

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman received on Sunday the awards that were given to the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) at the recent Global Water Summit in Greece.

Abdullah Al-Hussayen, water and electricity minister, who took the awards to the king, was accompanied by Electricity & Co-Generation Regulatory Authority (ECRA) Gov. Abdullah Al-Shehri, SWCC Gov. Abdul Rahman Al-Ibrahim and other senior officials of the ministry and organizations related to water and electricity.

International companies working in the area of saline water conversion participated in the summit.

Al-Hussayen said the first award was for being the best water desalination organization in the world as it is using the most advanced equipment.

The second award was for the desalination station in Ras Al-Khair, which has shown unprecedented high standards of operations and efficiency.

The minister said that around 90 years ago, King Abdul Aziz ordered construction of a desalination plant in Jeddah, which used seawater as the only resource. The plant had a daily production capacity of 300 cubic meters. “Now, the desalination capacity in the Kingdom has reached 5 million cubic meters per day. It covers 46 cities and governorates with an average supply of 150 liters per person per day, produced at 30 desalination plants.”

The total length of supply pipeline is 7,000 km. It caters to around 60 percent of domestic use in the Kingdom, making Saudi Arabia the largest producer of desalinated water in the world.

Its electricity co-generation capacity has reached 7,500MW and is considered one of the major electricity producers in the country.

Al-Hussayen said that the corporation is 90 percent dependent on the local human resources for its operations. It is also focusing on locally training the nationals. It presented 42,000 training opportunities. It is also promoting research and development.

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