The plants, which also produce electricity as well as drinking water from sea water, will push to 36 the total number of desalination facilities in the kingdom, the world's largest producer of desalinated water, Arab News said.

Al-Hussain said said the new plants would be set up across the vast country at Farsan, Qunfudha, Al-Laith, Rabiq, Al-Wajea and Al-Umlaj.

Production capacity at Saudi Arabia's biggest desalination plant at Al-Shuaiba, near the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, is set to rise to 150 million cubic meters (5,250 million cubic feet) a year from the current level of 24.6 million cubic meters.

The desert kingdom has scarce fresh water resources and contributes 30 percent of global desalination output. The 30 desalination plants pump almost 600 million gallons (some 2.27 billion litres) of water daily through nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) of pipeline, meeting 70 percent of Saudi needs for drinking water. The rest comes from underground water.

Saudi Arabia produced more than 857.4 million cubic meters of desalinated water in 2001.

Water is heavily subsidised by the state in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, where the a cubic meter of water costs about 1.30 dollars to produce and is sold for about four US cents.

TERRA.WIRE