Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp’s consortium has won preferential rights to join a JPY 500 to JPY 600 billion power and water desalination project in Saudi Arabia. Malaysian power provider Malakoff Bhd and Saudi Arabia’s Al Jomaih group are also in the consortium. The Saudi government will take a 40 % stake in the plant, to be located northeast of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the three companies will hold 20 % each. The plant is expected to generate around 1 million kilowatts of electricity, equivalent to the amount produced by a typical nuclear reactor in Japan, and some 1 million tonnes of water a day. The paper said that Sumitomo is expected to use equipment made by a unit of Fuji Electric Holdings for the plant, and operations will likely start in 2012.
