Jordan has started qualifying the top five global coalitions to start - early next year - the implementation of the "National Carrier" project to desalinate the Red Sea water from the city of Aqaba in the south, and transfer it to the governorates of the Kingdom in the north, with quantities ranging between 250 and 300 million cubic meters, and at a cost of one billion dollars in its first phase. .

The implementation of the national carrier project comes after Jordan turned the page on the "Bahrain Regional Carrier" project in partnership with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which for a decade constituted an important strategic project, and hopes were pinned on it to save the Kingdom from its drinking water problems.

The Jordanian Minister of Water and Irrigation, Muhammad Al-Najjar, announced a few days ago that "the implementation of the joint Bahrain conveyor project between Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel has stalled, and it has become news."

It is a project that Jordan has always dreamed of implementing, especially after signing an international agreement between the parties to start implementing the first phase of the project during 2015, with the presence and support of the United States and the World Bank, but the project did not see the light, and remained trapped in the papers and plans that had been drawn.

Well-drilling mechanisms and exploration for underground drinking water are in full swing (Al-Jazeera)

Israeli intransigence

Jordan's official announcement that it abandoned the implementation of the Bahrain conveyor project came after "Israel's decade-long intransigence and procrastination, due to the presence of many water alternatives in the hands of the Israelis, unlike Jordan's situation," according to an official source.

The matter went beyond that, according to the source, due to “Israeli pressure on the World Bank to remove the project from its work agenda.” The World Bank Group announced within the framework of the World Bank Group’s Qatar Partnership for Jordan for the fiscal years 2017-2022;

The regional water project (Red Sea-Dead Sea Project), which was developed at the beginning of the Qatar Partnership Framework period, is no longer among the projects intended to be implemented, and the reason for this is the lack of governmental agreement on the project's parameters.

The idea of ​​the project is to link the Red Sea in the south and the Dead Sea in the north by a canal, in order to raise the level of the Dead Sea from the water that is declining at a rate of one meter per year due to evaporation, and at a rate of up to 200 million cubic meters annually, and to save 85 million cubic meters of desalinated water. Jordan annually, and a project to generate electricity.

Maintenance of the Disi basin water project in the south of the Kingdom (Al-Jazeera)

The search for alternatives

The faltering implementation of the Bahrain tanker project prompted the Jordanian authorities to search for a new national carrier project to secure the necessary and necessary quantities of water for local consumption. The local alternative was the “national carrier project to desalinate Red Sea water in the south and transfer it to the governorates of the Kingdom in the north.”

The Secretary-General of the Water Authority, Ahmed Alimat, considered the national carrier project “a strategic option and a permanent solution to the problem of the aggravating water deficit in the Kingdom. The project will provide 350 million cubic meters of desalinated water, after the establishment of huge desalination plants on the shore of the coastal city of Aqaba, and stations for transporting and pumping water to the governorates of the Kingdom in the north.” .

He continued - in an interview with Al Jazeera Net - that the project will be implemented "in the build, operate and transfer of ownership (BOT) system in partnership with the private sector, and will provide in its first phase 130 million cubic meters, up to its maximum capacity of 350 million cubic meters, according to the best Specifications

The capital value of the project in its phases is estimated between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars, and a meter of desalinated water will be sold at a price of 35 to 37 piasters (50 cents) at the site, reaching Amman by about 70 piasters (one dollar). to neighboring countries, according to the instructions.

Jordan suffers from an annual water deficit estimated at 400 million cubic meters annually, in addition to the effects of climate change and a decline in rainfall. It is expected that the quantities of desalinated water will begin to flow into the northern governorates of the Kingdom in the first phase between 2025 and 2026.

Cleaning the streams of the valleys carrying rain water for King Talal Dam (Al-Jazeera)

high cost

In front of the cost of the national carrier project, which amounts to about two billion dollars, in light of a public debt recorded until the end of last February, an increase of 33.3 billion dinars (47 billion dollars);

Experts question Jordan's ability to implement the project, in addition to the narrow coastal strip of the city of Aqaba overlooking the Red Sea, which is about 30 kilometers long.

Representative Moussa Hantash, an expert in the field of water and soil, pointed to a number of available and quick-implemented alternatives, and the availability of the quantities of water to be secured from the national carrier project. The most prominent of these alternatives are “treatment of water losses due to damage to the delivery networks, and theft attacks that take place on the conveying lines,” and the value of the loss is estimated Between 48 and 80% in the governorates of the Kingdom, according to Hantash.

Hantash added to Al Jazeera Net that one of the alternatives is to "dig 1,500 wells in the northern and southern Jordan Valley regions, which save about 100 million cubic meters, according to international studies, and at a low cost compared to the Bahrain carrier, with the need for a better investment of the waters of the Azraq area (eastern Jordan), and the transfer of the Euphrates River water from Iraq to Jordan.

The gate of King Talal Dam, the largest in the Kingdom for water harvesting (Al-Jazeera)

magic solution

On the other hand, water expert Radwan Wishah sees the national carrier project as "a magic and permanent solution to address the crisis of the increasing demand for water in Jordan, and with the implementation of the project, there is nothing to prevent the Ministry of Water from treating water losses, confronting attacks, continuing to dig wells and purchasing water from well owners artesian water harvesting, dam building, and others.

He added to Al Jazeera Net that one of the reasons for the "failure" of the Bahrain conveyor project was "Jordan's inability to market it as an environmental project to save the Dead Sea, especially since the Dead Sea water recedes at a rate of one meter annually, and we lose about 50 million cubic meters annually of groundwater flowing into the sea as a result of the increasing decline." ".

With the faltering project of the Bahrain Conveyor, it leaves the Dead Sea alone, facing its crisis with an inevitable fate with the continued decline of its water annually, and the decline in the flowing quantities from the Jordan River due to the repeated attacks by the Israeli occupation on the estuaries of the water supplying the Dead Sea, the most important of which is the Jordan River, after the river used to feed the sea with 1.5 billion cubic meters annually, not more than 200 million cubic meters reach the sea.