Saudis Find ‘Ocean of Sweet Water’
This country, already sitting on vast oil reserves, also has enough water under the desert to meet its needs for two centuries, researchers said Saturday.
“There is an ocean of sweet water under the . . . sands,” said Bakr Abdullah ibn Bakr, rector of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.
“We have the equivalent of the annual flow of the Nile River for 600 years,” he told reporters. “It’s accessible and sweet.”
The water lies in three major aquifers, or porous, water-bearing rock formations, said Abdullah Dabbagh, director of the university’s Research Institute.
He did not say where the aquifers were located. But he said that the institute had drawn up a strategic plan for exploiting them, proposing pipelines to major cities.
He also said the underground water discovery means Saudi Arabia will no longer need to rely on costly desalination plants, which now provide 80% of its domestic water supplies.
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