17 cos bid in Red-Dead Sea pipeline tender
Bidders in the $800 million tender include Chinese, Lebanese, Egyptian, Japanese, Korean, Canadian and Israeli companies.
International concerns are showing interest in Israel and Jordan's Red-Dead Sea pipeline. Sources inform "Globes" that 17 groups of Israeli and international companies yesterday bid in the tender for construction and operation of the project. Among the Israeli companies bidding were Shari Arison-controlled Shikun & Binui Holdings Ltd. (TASE: SKBN), Kardan NV (TASE: KRNV;AEX:KARD) subsidiary Tahal Group International BV, Yitzhak Tshuva-controlled IDE Technologies, and GES, controlled by Azrieli Group Ltd. (TASE: AZRG) subsidiary Granite Hacarmel. A sizeable number of Chinese government companies bid in the tender, as well as European companies. The tender is estimated at over $800 million.
The project is designed to save the Dead Sea, whose level has been falling year by year, and arrange the division of water between Israel and Jordan. The parties signed a letter of intent as early as December 2013 in the World Bank headquarters in New York. Under the agreement, the first pipeline to be laid will be 200 kilometers long. It will pipe water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, and its route will pass through Jordanian territory. Work on laying the pipeline is scheduled to take three years.
A desalinization facility and power station on the Jordanian side
Some of the water passing through the pipeline will be sent to a desalinization plant in Aqaba, Jordan with an annual capacity of 65-85 million cubic meters. The plant will also serve Israel, which will buy water from it and supply it to the Arava region and Eilat. In exchange, Israel is undertaking to supply water from Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) to northern Jordan. The desalinization plant will be built and operated according to the build, operate, and transfer (BOT) model. The company that wins the tender will operate the plant for 25 years, after which ownership will pass to the state. The tender also includes the construction of a 10-megawatt hydroelectric power plant on the Jordanian side.