King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, arrived in the Eastern Province Sunday on a six-day visit to launch a number of development projects. The King would launch projects worth more than SR54 billion, mainly in the power generation and petrochemicals industries to create more job opportunities in a region that generates most of the Kingdom's revenues. The Chief Executive Officer of Marafiq company, Thamer Bin Saud Al-Sharhan, said King Abdullah was scheduled to inaugurate Tuesday the world's largest saline water desalination and electricity project in Jubail Industrial City. The project, estimated to cost some SR13 billion, will be carried out by Marafiq's subsidiary company, the Jubail Water and Electricity Company (JAWAB). Al-Sharhan said the plans would produce a daily power capacity output of 2,750 megawatts and 800,000 cubic meters of water. The first desalination unit is expected to start production by the middle of 2009 and commercial operations will begin in 2010. The desalination units will be based on a multiple distillation technique designed by a French company Sidam which has agreed to provide JAWAB with 27 evaporation units, nine of which will be manufactured in the Kingdom, and each one weighing 1,810 tons with a length of 65m, a width of 22m and a height of 13m. Al-Sharhan said he hoped the company would achieve a balance between long-term profits and investments in a modern infrastructure to serve the interests of clients. “The project was designed in accordance with the latest and best technical specifications, taking into account regional and international experience in the field to reduce investment risk, which will reflect positively on costs,” Al-Sarhan said. Approximately 500,000 cubic meters of water will be provided daily to cities in the Eastern Province in addition to that supplied to Jubail. Jubail 2: springboard for industrial growth In this small city of a population of a little over 100,000 people, the industrialization of the Eastern Province will have a big boost with the new $2.6 billion industrial zone Jubail 2 occupying a total area of 8,000 hectares, west of the current industrial zone. To help place Saudi Arabia as the petrochemical leader of the world and to diversify its economy, Jubail 2 has been designed with future petrochemical basic industries in mind to meet future energy and market demands. Jubail 2 as the showpiece of Saudi industry will develop a broad range of basic petrochemical products from olefins and natural gas, which will no longer be flared and wasted. Industries of plastic, steel, copper, aluminum, agricultural chemicals will be one of the backbones of Jubail 2 produced by giant companies like Aramco and SABIC. The four-stage expansion of Jubail with many primary petrochemical plants has been progressing since 2002. The first phase started in 2002 and was completed in 2007. The second phase of the expansion started in 2008 and it is expected to be completed in 2012; the third from 2012 to 2018, and the fourth from 2019 to 2022. The eastern part of the Jubail industrial zone will play as a support area for completing the development stages of Jubail 2.
