Market briefing: MENA water, August 2026

The market is working around a war. Since late February the Gulf’s desalination plants have been a target for the first time since 1991, when Iraqi forces purposely destroyed most of Kuwait’s capacity.¹ The route their supplies travel has been closed. Procurement carried on anyway, unevenly. The gap between what was scheduled and what has been announced is now the thing worth watching.

Read live from the pipeline and awards tracker on 29 September 2026, not as they stood in the issue month.

The plants themselves

On 7 March a desalination plant on Iran’s Qeshm Island was hit, cutting supply to about 30 villages. A day later an Iranian drone damaged a plant in Bahrain, which Iran’s foreign minister called retaliation for a US attack. Bahrain’s Electricity and Water Authority said residents lost no supply. Kuwait desalinates about 90% of its drinking water. It has been struck repeatedly. A worker was killed at a power and water station on 30 March, a second plant was hit on 3 April, and a July strike caused what the government called widespread damage.²

The commercial consequence is not damage, which has so far been partial and repairable. It is that the buffer behind these systems is now a live question for lenders. Gulf states hold somewhere between two and fifteen days of stored drinking water, depending on whose estimate is used. The estimates disagree because almost nobody publishes the number.⁴ No Gulf government or utility has announced a new storage or hardening programme in response. Six months in, that absence is itself the finding.

Hormuz, and what it now costs to ship

War-risk insurance has gone from 0.125% of hull value per transit before the war to between 7.5 and 10% by July. Washington declared the strait clear of mines on 26 August. Tehran answered that only Iran knows where they are. Fighting resumed four days later near Larak Island. For water projects the exposure is indirect and real. Membranes, antiscalants and spare pumps arrive by sea, and Gulf chemical chains were reported holding only weeks of inventory. Supply is expected to take six to nine months to normalise. No desalination-specific shortage has been documented.³

Jordan: the carrier finds its lenders

AIIB approved US$250 million for the Aqaba to Amman carrier on 25 March, co-financed with EBRD. The 30-year concession was signed with the Meridiam and SUEZ consortium in January 2025. Financial close has not been announced. Jordan lives on about 61 m³ per person a year, so this remains the decade’s defining transaction. It is also the first real test of whether grants, concessional debt and a sovereign offtake can carry a water PPP at once.⁵

Saudi Arabia: a published plan, and its own dates

Sharakat is the most transparent procurer in the region. Its 7 Year Statement gives quarter-level milestones for 53 projects. That transparency now works against it. The statement put financial close in mid-2026 on Arana, on the Jazan small-plant cluster, and on the Hadda plant awarded in December to Metito, EtihadWE and SkyBridge. None has been published. Watch Riyadh to Qassim, the 859 km transmission PPP with Vision Invest as preferred bidder. Three long-distance pipelines procured this way would be a new asset class, and the tariff set here anchors the rest.⁶

Kuwait: one signature, one field of bidders

Kuwait signed the region’s largest water and power contract this year. Az-Zour North phases 2 and 3 went to ACWA Power and Gulf Investment Corporation on 11 February, at about US$4.1 billion. Al-Khairan Phase 1 then opened two bids on 3 June, after four deadline extensions. Kuwait’s plants were being hit in those same months, and it ran a competitive tender anyway. Its record did not suggest it would.⁷

Also this month

Egypt’s five-plant PPP bundle is led by a desalination plant in the Suez Canal Economic Zone. It had still not reached the market when last reported in May, having first been announced for a January 2026 launch.⁸ Oman’s qualification round for the Al Ansab and Al Amerat sewage expansions closed in December with no published result. One price signal holds through all of it, and it is not the one usually quoted. Dubai’s US$0.277 record of 2020 was never financed: the contract failed and the site was re-let in 2023 at US$0.365. Bahrain’s first independent water project drew a low bid of US$0.73 in July, and Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat bid in 2024 at US$0.731. The market is priced at roughly two and a half times its own record.

The calendar below is current, not the one published with this issue.

Coming up

• 20–22 October 2026 · WETEX (Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition) · Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• 25–29 October 2026 · Cairo Water Week 2026 · New Cairo, Egypt
• 26–27 October 2026 · The 7th Arab Water Conference · New Cairo, Egypt
• 1–5 November 2026 · IDRA World Congress 2026 · Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• 9–20 November 2026 · COP31 - UN Climate Change Conference · Antalya, Türkiye
• 8–10 December 2026 · Abu Dhabi Water & Power Week · Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

The full list, with calls and training, is on the calendar.

Next edition: October 2026. Figures reflect public reporting at publication; confirm against primary sources before relying on them.