Syria's Energy Ministry, ACWA-WTCO Consortium and Fichtner Sign Desalination Studies Agreement

On 7 September 2026, ACWA Power announced a technical services agreement for studies of Syria's water resources and of ways to desalinate seawater and transport water. Its consortium with the Saudi Water Transmission Company (WTCO) signed it alongside the Syrian Ministry of Energy and engineering group Fichtner.

The Technical Services Agreement

ACWA says the agreement starts the technical studies foreseen in the February 2026 joint development agreement between the Ministry and the consortium. The company lists three tasks: taking stock of the country's water resources, estimating future demand, and picking the desalination and transmission solutions that should come first. It adds that the work is coordinated with the Syrian authorities concerned, will yield a roadmap ordering the options by impact, ease of delivery and time to market, and will give the Ministry an evidence base for choosing priority projects.

The February 2026 Joint Development Agreement

At a Damascus ceremony on 7 February 2026 announcing a package of Syrian–Saudi contracts, Energy Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir said, as SANA reported, that the agreement with ACWA Power and the Saudi Water Transmission Company sets out a roadmap for water cooperation, covering desalination and transmission projects and a seawater desalination plant on the Syrian coast to bring fresh water to the southern governorates.

In a statement dated 8 February, ACWA said the agreement opened joint technical, commercial and feasibility work, from water demand and available resources to desalination and transmission options, and put the desalination capacity under assessment at up to about 1.2 million cubic metres a day. CEO Marco Arcelli called the approach "structured and phased", and the statement presents the agreement as a preliminary stage for studying and assessing the options, with any development stages coming later.

What Syrian Officials Have Said

Ahmed Al-Kawwan, director general of the General Authority for Water Resources, was quoted by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on 8 February as saying that the first phase consists of one to two years of technical studies and that implementation is expected to begin within two years if matters proceed as planned. He said the preliminary studies, which included test wells, pointed to substantial water yield in the coastal basin and found freshwater springs about 500 metres out at sea.

In remarks to Al-Thawra on 21 February, he said no final timetable had been set for each stage, joint technical committees had been formed to draw one up, and the project remained at the study stage. The first phase of the studies, he said, focuses on securing fresh water at the lowest cost from surplus water, springs, dams and freshwater sea springs before turning to desalination.

Background

SANA reported on 18 June 2025 that the head of the Planning and Statistics Authority and the Deputy Minister of Energy for Water Affairs discussed a coastal water conveyance and seawater desalination project, and that the Authority was ready to form a team to study its feasibility. On 22 August 2025, it reported that a video meeting between the Energy Minister and ACWA Power, centred on renewable energy, also took up a seawater desalination project. SANA's reports do not say whether these discussions concern the project covered by the 2026 agreements.