Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - Plans are afoot to build what could become one of the world's longest pipelines, costing $10.5bn and stretching about 2,000 kilometres from Oman to Kuwait.
But instead of transporting the fossil fuels produced in this oil-rich corner of the Middle East, the pipes would be pumping something even more precious: water. With little groundwater - and, in some cases, just a few days' worth of fresh water in reserve - countries in the Gulf region fear they could face dire consequences if their water supply were to be disrupted.
This is an important project to secure water sustainability, because we are in a [water] scarce region.
- Rashid Bin Fahad, UAE's environment and water minister
Last week, the undersecretaries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries' water authorities met in Kuwait to discuss the proposed "water grid", which would shuttle the liquid from states with excess supply to those in need of a drink. Meetings on the mega-project are expected to resume in March at the ministerial level.
The GCC is a bloc of six oil-exporting monarchies including Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman.
"Water has always been the biggest challenge - not just for the UAE, but for the world," Rashid Bin Fahad, the UAE's environment and water minister, told Al Jazeera. "This is an important project to secure water sustainability, because we are in a [water] scarce region."
Water worries
Threats to the GCC countries' water supply, say some analysts, are magnified by the fact that they rely heavily on desalinating water from a single source: the Gulf.
Walid Khalil Zubari, a water scientist from Bahrain who participated in last week's meeting, said he sees five types of threats to the region's water supply: pollution caused by oil spills, red tides, or other factors; nuclear contamination; power outages or hackers disabling desalination plants; natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes; and acts of war.
"Most of the Gulf countries have relatively little water storage," said Tom Pankratz, the editor of Water Desalination Report. "If there are operational problems with multiple plants in one area, you could jeopardise the water production for a fairly large number of people and industries."
The transnational grid would be the first of its kind, according to Zubari. The plan calls for building two giant desalination plants on Oman's Indian Sea coast that would together be able to produce 500 million cubic metres of water per year.
Desalination plants extract the salt found in seawater - either by heating the water and condensing the steam, or pushing the water through a membrane that filters out the salt. The process is energy-intensive, but the Gulf countries have no shortage of fuel - and plants are becoming more efficient.
The biggest beneficiaries of the grid, Zubari said, would likely be Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, because their limited amounts of groundwater give them few options in case of emergency. More
