Jordan signs deal with French-led group to build massive desalination plant
New $5 billion Red Sea project to supply more than 300 million cubic meters of drinking water comes after cancellation of joint project with Israel

AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan, one of the world’s driest countries, signed an agreement on Sunday with French-led investors to build one of the world’s largest desalination plants.
Jordan’s official Petra news agency called it the country’s biggest-ever infrastructure project, which Jordanian Prime Minister Jafar Hassan has told Parliament is valued at more than $5 billion.
French infrastructure specialist Meridiam is leading the project in partnership with SUEZ, Orascom Construction, and VINCI Construction Grands Projets.
On its website, Meridiam said the project would supply more than 300 million cubic meters of drinking water to Amman and Aqaba, serving in excess of three million people.
“This project will increase the total annual available domestic water supply by almost 60 percent” for households, and will also include about 445 kilometers (276 miles) of pipelines to transport the desalinated water from the Red Sea, Meridiam said.
Jordan’s Water and Irrigation Minister Raed Abu al-Saud emphasized the project’s “transformative potential”, noting it would “mark a significant shift in Jordan’s water security landscape,” according to Petra.
The project will take about four years to complete, the prime minister said last month.
It follows Jordan’s pullout from a plan that would have linked the Dead Sea and the Red Sea by pipes in Jordan.
In 2013, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians signed a memorandum of understanding on that project, which included plans to build a desalination plant at the Red Sea.
But against the backdrop of popular anger in Jordan, due to stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, then-water minister Mohammad al-Najjar said in June 2021 that the Red Sea-Dead Sea project was “now a thing of the past.”

Israel provides Jordan with water as part of the 1994 peace treaty.
In November, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi announced that his country would back out of a United Arab Emirates-brokered deal from 2021 intended to have Jordan supply solar energy to Israel in return for Israel giving it additional desalinated water.
But in March, Amman reportedly asked to extend it by an additional year. Israel replied to Jordan with a request that Jordanian officials moderate their vocal criticism of Israel.
Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.