Water in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia runs the world's largest man-made water system. It has no rivers, no lakes and about 75 m³ of renewable water per person, and it supplies 34 million people anyway. The Kingdom desalinates more seawater than any country on earth. Capacity reached 16 million m³ a day by 2026, up from 9 million in 2016,⁷ and the water is pumped hundreds of kilometres inland to Riyadh, at more than 600 metres of elevation. It has also spent two decades unwinding its most expensive experiment, growing wheat on fossil water. State purchases stopped in 2016, and a smaller, quota-bound crop returned in 2018.³⁵

For the water industry, Saudi Arabia is the region's deepest market. Under Vision 2030 the state is transferring production, treatment and even transmission to private developers through SWPC's rolling tender programme. It is the pipeline every regional and global player watches.

A quick-reference dashboard for Saudi Arabia: headline economy and water indicators⁵¹⁵², water stress against the scarcity thresholds, non-conventional supply, and the institutions behind the sector. The commercial picture, with buyers, deal structures and the project pipeline, is in the market brief.

One interactive map of Saudi Arabia's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The WRI Aqueduct layers, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade every river sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure brings the physical system together: rivers, dams (FAO AQUASTAT), treatment plants, desalination and the major conveyors. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

Saudi Arabia covers about 2.15 million km², by far the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula.²⁶ It has about 1,750 km of Red Sea coast and 480 km on the Gulf.²⁶ FAO divides it into four units: the Western Mountains of the Arabian Shield, the Central Hills, the eastern deserts and the coastal regions.²⁶ Along the Red Sea, the narrow Tihama coastal strip widens around Jeddah.¹ Sand seas cover much of the interior, from the Rub’ al-Khali in the south to the Great Nafud in the north.¹ There are no perennial rivers. Wadis flow only after heavy rain, in short flash floods.²⁶

Rainfall

Rainfall is low and erratic. The north receives 100–200 mm a year and areas further south less than 100 mm, though small parts of the western and southern highlands get 500 mm.²⁶ FAO put the national average at 114 mm a year.²⁶ Riyadh’s rain falls almost entirely between January and May, and Jeddah’s between November and January.¹ Years differ sharply. Average rainfall was 87 mm in 2018 but 55 mm in 2019.¹ That year, station totals ranged from 26.1 mm at Wadi AlDawasir to 304.4 mm at Khamis Mushayt.¹ Heavy rain brings flash floods. In 2009, 70 mm fell on Jeddah in about three hours, and the flood killed 113 people.⁵

Heat

Inland summer temperatures range from 27 to 45 °C, and coastal ones from 27 to 38 °C.¹ In the centre, summer maxima exceed 50 °C, while winter nights come close to freezing.²⁶ For early August 2026 the National Center for Meteorology forecast 47–49 °C in parts of the east.⁶ A national trend study found temperatures rising in all regions and rainfall falling in many.⁴ For South West Asia, the IPCC finds that warming has amplified droughts since the 1980s. Extreme rainfall has increased, mostly at higher elevations.³

Projections and the coast

In the World Bank’s CMIP6 ensemble, days above 35 °C rise from about 160 a year in 1995–2014 to about 225 by 2080–2099 under high emissions.² Rainfall projections disagree. The ensemble shows slightly more rain, while a regional study found mixed changes, mostly negative under one scenario.²⁴ The IPCC expects heavier rainfall events in South West Asia as warming rises.³ On the coast, a sea-level rise of 1–3 m would submerge about 614–2,217 km².¹ Al Wajh, Jeddah and Jazan are the most exposed coastal cities.¹

Rainfall and temperature in numbers

Averaged over the whole of Saudi Arabia, ERA5 reanalysis gives about 64 mm of rain a year and a mean temperature of 26.0 °C for 1991–2020. About 47% of that rain falls in November, January and March, and 6 months average less than 5 mm. Since 1971 the country has warmed by about 0.54 °C a decade. Average rainfall in 1993–2022 was about 8% lower than in 1951–1980, and single years swing widely around that.

Projected change

Source: World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, retrieved September 2026. ERA5 0.25° reanalysis for the annual series (1950–2022) and the monthly climatology (1991–2020); CMIP6 0.25° multi-model ensemble median for the projections, as change against 1995–2014. These are national averages, which hide the gap between wet highlands and dry interiors, and reanalysis rainfall over deserts carries wide uncertainty.

Fossil groundwater: the drawn-down inheritance

Groundwater lies in deep sedimentary aquifers, among them the Saq, Wajid, Tabuk, Minjur-Dhurma, Biyadh-Wasia, Umm er Radhuma and Dammam.¹ Most of it is fossil water, formed 10,000–32,000 years ago.¹ Renewable recharge mainly reaches shallow aquifers along the wadis and beneath alluvial fans.¹ Fossil groundwater built Saudi farming. In 2000 more than 95% of the 1.73 million ha equipped for irrigation drew on non-renewable aquifers.²⁶ Around Tabuk, abstraction in 2004 was more than a hundred times the aquifer’s recharge.²⁹ The minister says non-renewable groundwater use fell from about 21 billion m³ in 2016 to about 11 billion m³ in 2025.⁷

Runoff and dams

The western region produces 60% of runoff from only 10% of the land.²⁶ Estimated runoff was 6,746 million m³ in 2018 and 4,179 million m³ in 2019. Dams captured 1,200 and 970 million m³ in those years.¹

Manufactured water

Desalination carries municipal supply. It met about 65% of urban demand in 2019, and groundwater the rest.¹ About a quarter of treated wastewater was reused in 2025, against a National Water Strategy target of 70% by 2030.⁴⁰

Saudi Arabia’s water use grew with its farms. Irrigation water roughly tripled, from about 6.8 km³ in 1980 to about 21 km³ in 2006, FAO estimated.²⁶ Total withdrawal reached 23.7 km³ in 2006, 88% of it for agriculture. That equalled 943% of the country’s renewable water resources.²⁶ Almost all irrigation drew on fossil groundwater. In 2000, 1.73 million ha were equipped for irrigation, more than 95% of them supplied from non-renewable aquifers.²⁶

Wheat: the rise and fall of self-sufficiency

The state built the farm boom deliberately. From the 1970s it issued well permits wherever exploration found water, lent interest-free for pumps and centre pivots, and paid half the cost of pumping stations.²⁶ Saudi Arabia began exporting wheat in the mid-1980s and produced 4.1 million tonnes at its peak in the early 1990s.²⁷ Those exports rested on heavy subsidy.²⁸

Retrenchment came in stages. In 1994 the fixed wheat price was cut by 25%.²⁹ Purchase cuts halved national output to about 2 million tonnes within five years, and exports of wheat and forage were banned.²⁶ In 2008 the government decided to phase out domestic wheat by 2016. State purchases of local wheat duly stopped in 2016.³²³³ Fodder took wheat’s place in places. In Tabuk it rose from 7% of the cropped area in 1989 to more than 45% in 1999, so abstraction did not fall.²⁹ A ban on growing green fodder took effect on 5 November 2018.³⁴

Wheat has since returned under quota. Support resumed in 2018 as an alternative to alfalfa.³⁵ Production is now capped by a quota tied to groundwater availability. The 2026 harvest was forecast at about 1.1 million tonnes, against import needs of about 4 million.³⁶

Fossil aquifers drawn down

Withdrawals from the whole Saq aquifer system rose from about 890 MCM a year in 1980 to 8,727 MCM in 2005.²⁹ Around Tabuk, abstraction climbed from about 29 MCM a year in 1983 to between 1,050 and 1,700 MCM in 2004, against recharge of only 3–10 MCM. Water levels fell by up to 32 m a year in the late 1980s.²⁹ A Saudi projection has the exploitable reserve falling from 75% to 38% between 2005 and 2055.²⁹ Satellite data show groundwater storage losses of about 165 mm a year around Jeddah between 2002 and 2023.³⁷

The cities and the sea

Municipal demand now leans on desalination. In 2006 desalinated water covered about 48% of municipal use.²⁶ By 2026 it supplied about 70% of drinking water, but only 18.1% of total water demand.³⁸ Household use averaged 263 litres a person a day in 2019, and the Qatrah programme aims for 150 litres by 2030.³⁹ Water losses stood at about 36% in 2024, and the ministry plans to cut them to around 15% by 2030.¹⁷ The National Water Company had installed more than two million smart meters by October 2020 and linked 950,000 customers to weekly high-consumption alerts.¹⁸ In 2025 only about a quarter of the more than 6.5 million m³ of municipal wastewater treated each day was reused, against a target of 70% by 2030.⁴⁰

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT estimates put Saudi Arabia’s freshwater withdrawals at 16.1 billion m³ in 1992 and 23.4 billion m³ in 2022. Agriculture’s share of the total moved from 89% in 1994 to 82% in 2022.

Source: FAO AQUASTAT via the World Bank World Development Indicators, retrieved September 2026. AQUASTAT revises national figures irregularly and fills the years between surveys, so a jump between two adjacent years usually marks a new national estimate rather than a change on the ground.

Saudi Arabia runs one of the world’s largest desalination fleets. In 2019 it had 51 plants with about 7.77 million m³ a day of capacity.¹ Thermal distillation still dominated: multi-stage flash produced 54% of output, multi-effect distillation 14% and reverse osmosis 32%.¹ The Gulf coast produced 53% and the Red Sea coast 47%.¹ By June 2026 the minister put production capacity at 16 million m³ a day, up from 9 million in 2016.⁷ Ras Al-Khair, a hybrid plant, has 1.05 million m³ a day of water and 2.65 GW of power capacity.⁸

Independent water projects

Private plants now add capacity under long-term contracts. Rabigh 3, a reverse osmosis plant of 600,000 m³ a day, began commercial operation in 2021 at a tariff of SAR 1.99 per m³.⁹ Shuqaiq 3 followed in 2022, with 450,000 m³ a day for Jazan, Asir and Najran.⁹ Jubail 3A, at 600,000 m³ a day, came online in 2023 at SAR 1.55 per m³.⁹ Jubail 3B, with 570,000 m³ a day for Riyadh and Qassim, followed in 2024.⁹ More are contracted. Jubail 4&6 and Shuqaiq 4 are due in 2029, and Ras Al-Khair 3 and 2 in 2030 and 2031.⁹

Moving water inland

Transmission links inland cities such as Riyadh to sources more than 400 km away, and more than 10,000 km of new pipelines are planned.¹⁰ The Water Transmission Company has led efficiency work on the network since 2022.¹⁰ Two private transmission lines are due in 2029. Jubail–Buraydah will carry 650,000 m³ a day over 587 km, and Riyadh–Qassim 685,000 m³ a day over 859 km.⁹ Strategic storage capacity has grown by more than 125%, the minister said in 2026.⁷ In Makkah, the Juranah reservoir will hold 2 million m³ of strategic storage plus 500,000 m³ of operational storage.¹¹

Wastewater and networks

In 2019, 99 treatment plants handled 1,802 million m³ of sewage, but only 311 million m³, or 17.2%, was reused.¹ The National Water Company runs collection, treatment and reuse.¹ In September 2026 it was expanding a Riyadh plant to 400,000 m³ a day.¹² The private Al Haer plant in Riyadh adds 200,000 m³ a day from 2026.⁹ The minister says all residents have safe drinking water, about 85% of them through the network.⁷ The National Water Strategy estimates network losses at more than 25% in some regions.¹³

Dams

By 2019 Saudi Arabia had built 522 dams, most of them for groundwater recharge and flood control.¹ The largest, King Fahd Dam at Bisha, holds 325 million m³.²⁶

The asset base in numbers

Sources: FAO AQUASTAT regional dam inventories (CC BY 4.0), which list large dams with a published capacity and can lag recent construction; the MENA Water Review major projects register, where each record cites its source on the project page. The database follows large contracted projects, not the whole asset base.

Fossil water quality is expected to deteriorate as pumping draws poorer water toward the well fields, FAO noted.²⁶ In the western Saq–Ram aquifer, 25% of samples exceeded 50 mg/L of nitrate, mostly from shallow unconfined wells. Boron and selenium above guideline values have also been detected.²⁹ The same aquifer carries natural radioactivity. Combined radium-226 and radium-228 reach up to 4 Bq/L, against WHO guidance levels of 1 Bq/L for radium-226 and 0.1 Bq/L for radium-228.²⁹ On the Gulf side, seawater intrusion and over-pumping are increasingly salinising the Umm er Radhuma–Dammam aquifer.³⁰

Soil salinity is appearing in newly developed farm areas, and at Al-Hassa drainage water is mixed with fresh groundwater for reuse.²⁶ Local studies add detail. Groundwater samples around Riyadh showed chloride up to 966.5 mg/L, some above limits.⁴¹ Samples in Wadi Ranyah exceeded limits for arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and nickel.⁴²

The coast

Desalination turns coastal water quality into a supply question. The 1991 Gulf War oil spills coated more than 770 km of coastline from southern Kuwait to Abu Ali Island.⁴³ In 2008–09 a red tide shut desalination plants in Oman and the UAE for up to two months, and reverse-osmosis intakes are considered more vulnerable to such fouling.³⁸

The reported indicators

Sources: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme via the World Bank; SDG 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 from the UN Statistics Division SDG database, retrieved September 2026. Safely managed means an improved source on the premises, available when needed and free from priority contamination. SDG 6.3.2 rests on each country’s own monitoring network, so a high share can mean few water bodies were assessed, and values move when methods change between reporting rounds.

Saudi Arabia shares no rivers, but its aquifers flow across borders. FAO estimated the outflow to neighbours at about 394 million m³ a year.²⁶ Jordan receives 180 million, Bahrain 112 million, Iraq 80 million, Kuwait 20 million and Qatar 2 million.²⁶

Jordan and the Saq–Disi aquifer

Jordan began pumping the shared Saq–Ram aquifer in 1977 and Saudi Arabia in 1983.²⁹ Until the 1980s the groundwater flowed north toward Jordan. Heavy Saudi pumping for wheat reversed the flow toward the Saudi well fields.²⁹⁴⁴ Saudi withdrawals were estimated at over 1,000 MCM in 2008, against some 60 MCM on the Jordanian side.⁴⁴

A 2007 memorandum barred new production wells and farm expansion within 10 km of the border on both sides, but it was non-binding.²⁹ On 30 April 2015 the two states signed a formal agreement. It creates a protected area of about 400 km² in each country, where groundwater-dependent activity was to end within five years, and a wider management area limited to municipal use.⁴⁴ It sets no numerical limits on extraction, and its joint technical committee has no decision-making power.⁴⁴ Public evidence on its implementation is scarce.

The Gulf aquifers

The Umm er Radhuma–Dammam system, shared with Bahrain and Qatar, flows west to east out of Saudi Arabia, and no agreement governs it.³⁰ The Wasia–Biyadh–Aruma system in the south, shared with Yemen, has no agreement either. Its use is limited to the area around the Sharurah border post.³¹

The 2026 war

Unlike Kuwait and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia reported no damage to its desalination plants in the 2026 war. The threat still shaped planning. In March Iran threatened the Gulf’s water infrastructure, naming Saudi Arabia among the dependent states.⁴⁵ On 30 March Riyadh condemned an Iranian strike on a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant.⁴⁷ In April it intercepted drones over its own territory.⁴⁶ In July the Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia and attacked tankers in the Red Sea.⁴⁸ CSIS assessed that Saudi Arabia’s strategic reservoirs hold only modest reserves.³⁸

The record

Shared aquifers

• Neogene Aquifer System (South-East): Dibdibba-Kuwait GroupIraq, Kuwait · data moderate
• Saq-Ram Aquifer System (West) / DisiJordan · data good
• Tawil Quaternary Aquifer System: Wadi Sirhan BasinJordan · data good
• Umm er Radhuma-Dammam Aquifer System (Centre): GulfBahrain, Qatar, UAE · data good
• Umm er Radhuma-Dammam Aquifer System (North): Widyan-SalmanIraq, Kuwait · data moderate
• Umm er Radhuma-Dammam Aquifer System (South): Rub' al KhaliOman, UAE, Yemen · data moderate
• Wajid Aquifer SystemYemen · data good
• Wasia-Biyadh-Aruma Aquifer System (North): Sakaka-RutbaIraq · data moderate
• Wasia-Biyadh-Aruma Aquifer System (South): Tawila-Mahra/Cretaceous SandsYemen · data moderate

Source: IGRAC and UNESCO, Transboundary Aquifers of the World. Data reliability is IGRAC’s own assessment of the information behind each outline.

The Saline Water Conversion Corporation was founded in 1974.¹⁴ A Ministry of Water followed in 2001.²⁶ Today the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture sets policy under the National Water Strategy 2030 and its ten programmes.¹³ In May 2024, Cabinet Resolution No. 918 turned the corporation into the Saudi Water Authority, the regulator of water services.¹⁶ The authority calculates the gap between commercial-basis revenue and actual tariff revenue, and the Ministry of Finance covers it.¹⁶ SWCC’s production, transport and storage assets were moved to the PIF-owned Water Solutions Company, Arab News reported in 2023.¹⁵ Sharakat, the Saudi Water Partnership Company, tenders water, wastewater, transmission, storage and dam contracts.¹⁹

Prices and reform

Tariff reform has been politically sensitive. In 2016 the water minister was dismissed after an uproar over higher domestic tariffs.²⁰ In July 2021 the government suspended the privatisation of the Ras Al-Khair plant.²¹ In July 2026 the Cabinet named 2027 the Year of Water.²²

Saudi Arabia has turned water into an industrial supply chain. On ministerial figures, desalination capacity has grown by more than three-quarters since 2016, while fossil groundwater use has roughly halved.⁷ The next test is heat. Days above 35 °C could reach about 225 a year by 2080–2099 under high emissions, raising both demand and the energy cost of every cubic metre.²

Three curves are worth watching: reuse climbing toward the 2030 target, private plants and pipelines arriving on schedule, and fossil abstraction continuing to fall.⁴⁰⁹ The constraint is less money than the pace, and the energy, that Vision 2030 demands.