Saudi Arabia to build desalination plants

Saudi Arabia plans to build nine desalination plants for more than 2-billion riyals ($530m) on the Red Sea coast, environment minister Abdulrahman al-Fadhli said on Sunday. The plants would have capacity of 240,000m³ of water a day and would be completed in fewer than 18 months, he wrote in a Twitter post. The project would help government-owned Saudi Saline Water Conversion Corporation raise production efficiency and reduce operating and capital costs, the minister said.