Water from brine: How the Gulf states are making the desert bloom

Telegraph

08-05-2025

Standing in front of a seaside mosque in the port city of Sur, Mohammad Humeet al-Shumaki, 61, vividly remembers using a rusted jerrycan to fetch water for his family as a teenager. It involved a dusty three-mile to a brackish well but he would do it with friends.
'Every young boy carried a jerrycan – it was as essential as a football or schoolbook,' al-Shumaki recalled.
Now, decades later, water flows freely to his home in Sur in eastern Oman through a network of modern pipes. 'There are no cuts, no shortages. Water runs 24 hours a day,' he says, gesturing proudly to the spigot at the side of his two-storey home – it's 'a blessing'.
Across Oman and much of the Gulf, the previously unimaginable has become routine because of the world's most ambitious desalination project. Nearly half – about 45 per cent – of the planet's freshwater desalination occurs in the Arabian Gulf. In some areas, desalination provides up to 90 per cent of drinking water needs.
Sur is home to one of the largest of the region's 850 individual plants. It stretches nearly a mile along the coastline of the Gulf of Oman, (which is a continuation of Arabian sea and not directly on the Arabian sea) and turns seawater into potable supply for more than half a million people. Its modular 'reverse osmosis' plant is entirely powered by the sun through a massive 17 megawatt (MW) solar farm.
Removing the salt from seawater sounds like it should be simple but requires state-of-the-art equipment, a lot of space and a great deal of energy.
First, engineers extract salt water from 30 coastal wells through high-density polyethylene pipes and disinfect it with sodium hypochlorite, a form of bleach. The water then moves into Dissolved Air Filtration (DAF) units where tiny air bubbles swirl like champagne, latching onto microorganisms and filtering them out.
Only then is the water forced through thousands of spiral membranes, which extract the salt.
At the Sur plant, run by the French utility company Veolia, 12,000 spiral membranes, each 40 metres long, purify up to 130 million litres of water per day – enough to fill 52 Olympic sized swimming pools.
We watch as water surges through the yellow spiral membranes, creating such a deafening noise that prolonged exposure without earplugs would impair hearing.
The surrounding network of piping is like a colour coded spaghetti: blue for seawater, light blue for filtered water, white for brine discharge, pink for cleaning inlets, green for flushing lines and so on.
Finally, once fully filtered, the water undergoes remineralisation to make it safe for human consumption.
For decades, the major challenge with water desalination has been to make the process energy efficient and therefore affordable.
Even now energy accounts for roughly 45 per cent of the cost of producing a cubic metre of desalinated water, says Estelle Brachlianoff, chief executive of Veolia.
Previously desalination relied on heat energy to power a distillation process, where seawater was first evaporated and then condensed into freshwater. The new filtering process has greatly improved efficiency but challenges of cost remain.
'To make the process more energy-efficient has been a big challenge and still is to a certain extent,' said Ms Brachlianoff.
'The membranes are super fragile and salt is extremely aggressive.
'With reverse osmosis and smart membrane management, we've achieved up to 85 per cent energy efficiency.
'Now, we're also deploying generative AI to monitor and optimise membrane performance in real-time to make the process still more efficient.'
Combined with green electricity and other innovations, desalination costs have dropped significantly in the past decade, from about $5 a cubic metre to under $0.5 today.
With 50 per cent of the world's population living in water-scarce regions – and 80 per cent living near coastlines – the Middle East has become an innovation hub for global solutions.
The combination of falling costs and climate change now mean there is growing interest in the desalination technologies across the globe.
Veolia, which has 18 per cent of the global market, aims to double its operating capacity by next year, driven primarily by the Middle East, Pacific Asia, and some countries in Europe.
'You may think countries like the UK wouldn't need this, but we've already a unit there. We also operate sites in Australia, and interest is growing in the U.S. and South America – places where water scarcity was once unthinkable,' said Ms Brachlianoff.
In Sur and across Oman, these facilities now provide safe drinking water to millions, dramatically reducing illness from waterborne diseases that once plagued the region.
Jasim al-Zarai, 47, of Jalan Bani Bu Ali in Ash Sharqiyah South Governorate says the desalination plants have become the 'lifeblood' of Oman.
During al-Zarai's childhood, diarrhoea, jaundice and people fainting due to lack of access to safe drinking water was common.
'I don't know whether it was because of the intake of the underground salty water, but I can say incidence of these diseases have come down manifold with the access to desalinated water,' Mr. al-Zarai said.
'Access to safe drinking water is key to public health, and in Oman's arid climate, desalination is not just a utility – it's a lifeline
'Veolia's innovations are making this vital resource more affordable and sustainable, helping communities thrive where water scarcity would otherwise limit healthy living,'
Less than one per cent of the world's drinking water is desalinated while the Gulf countries depend on desalination plants for up to 90 per cent of their water needs.
The water is not only needed for people and cities to grow, but for the region's tourism, industry and agriculture.
'Desalination has enabled the Gulf states to grow their populations and economies hand in hand,' Mr. al-Zarai said.
Nevertheless there remain challenges.
The discharge of hypersaline brine – a byproduct of the desalination process – into the sea remains a major environmental issue in the Gulf.
It threatens to undermine marine ecosystems, and it can contaminate groundwater, according to Dr. Mushtaque Ahmed, a professor of water engineering at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat.
The Middle East is responsible for around 70 per cent of the world's brine output – disproportionately high compared to the amount of desalinated water produced.
That's largely because its desalination plants rely heavily on seawater, which contains more salt than the brackish water commonly treated in places in other parts of the world.
'The desalination plants in Oman are designed to diffuse the brine across wider areas to limit the environmental damage,' Dr Ahmed said. 'But the risks are still significant.'
'In areas with strong marine currents, we release the brine several miles offshore, where it disperses quickly and naturally,' Ms Brachlianoff said. 'But when the currents are weaker, we use multiple discharge points to spread the brine more evenly and avoid damaging marine ecosystems.'
'Every site starts with a detailed study of the seabed and water movement,' she added. 'It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. Our priority is to minimise the environmental impact and protect local marine life.'
While desalination provides water security in the Gulf, it also exposes strategic vulnerability.
In March, Qatar's prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, warned that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would "entirely contaminate" the waters of the Gulf.
The waters of the Gulf are also dotted with offshore oil rigs and plied by the world's largest oil tankers. An oil spill there would have the potential to disrupt the water supply of multiple Gulf countries.
And this is not just theoretical.
In the First Gulf War, when the Iraqi Army retreated from Kuwait, they destroyed what was then the country's only desalination plant and then released Kuwaiti oil into the Gulf, creating a large oil slick which disrupted the wider region's desalination.
'Water is as important and strategic as oil for the Gulf states,' said Ms Brachlianoff.
'Its scarcity was a limiting factor, but the desalination has brought strategic independence'.