In MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA, the World Bank is supporting the development of three desalination facilities.[1] County officials are currently tendering two of the desalination plants on a build, operate, transfer basis.  They will soon request proposals from five shortlisted companies for the third facility.  It is expected that the plants will be located in the West Mainland, the North Mainland, and Likoni, where the World Bank is financing the construction of a new water network. The projects will be financed through public-private partnership and are scheduled for completion by the end of 2017.

ISRAEL CHEMICALS LIMITED has stated that it seeks to sell its 50 percent share of IDE Technologies.^[2] Avshalom Felber, IDE’s chief executive, may purchase the share for $175-180 million, along with two other buyers.  Felber would acquire 10 percent of the shares, Clal Insurance 30 percent, and an Israeli teachers’ union fund the remaining 20 percent. Negotiations are still in process and have yet to materialize into a definitive sale.^[3]

SPAIN’S regional water company, Canal Isabel II, continues to suffer the consequences of an escalating corruption scandal.^[4] The Spanish national court is investigating several high-ranking officials, including the company’s former president, Ignacio González, and former CEOs, Ildefonso de Miguel and Adrián Martín.   A joint report conducted by three leading political parties has spurred the court to investigate the company’s alleged fraudulent purchase of the Brazilian energy and construction company, Emissao, in 2013; accusations of bribery committed by CYII contractors; and the acquisition of illicit contracts in Colombia, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.^[5] 

Two weeks ago, Spanish police arrested González, who has now been temporarily suspended from the country’s conservative Popular Party. In far-reaching raids across Madrid, police also arrested at least another 11 people, including Edmundo Rodríguez, who served as González’s top associate in South America.^[6]

^{Credit: Desalination.biz}

STATOIL, the transnational Norwegian-based energy company, has issued the first order of GE Water’s seawater sulphate removal technology.^[7]  GE, as part of a consortium with the Norwegian thermal energy experts, Halvorsen TEC, will supply a complete sulphate removal unit (SRU).  The project will support Statoil’s oil production wells in the Barents Sea, roughly 100 kilometers from Snøhvit.

The SRU will enable Statoil to process 2,000 cubic metres of seawater per hour at less than 20 parts per million sulphate. GE and Halvorsen will begin front end engineering work in 2017, and construct and deliver equipment by mid-2019.  The first round of oil production is schedule for 2022.^[8]