Khan (right) ... receiving the award.

AES Arabia, a Riyadh-based water treatment company, has won the Industrial Desalination Plant of the Year award at the Global Water Awards in Paris, France, in recognition of the company’s achievement in delivering the largest desalination plant in the world for the oil and gas sector.

The company delivered a turnkey 80,000-cu-m-a-day sea water desalination plant for Saudi Aramco’s Jazan integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plant on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast, said AES Arabia.

The desalination plant was built in accordance with the high technical standards demanded by the oil and gas industry and under the rigorous Aramco quality control requirements, it stated.   AES utilised its experienced in-house engineering and in-kingdom manufacturing capabilities to assemble large portions of the installation off-site, thus significantly reducing the project cost and the delivery time, it added.

Asad Khan, the business development manager, received the award at a glittering ceremony held in Paris.

AES has been operating in the kingdom since 1993 and has delivered multiple industrial and municipal projects throughout the GCC region with high emphasis on the oil and gas sector and complying with its stringent engineering and material requirement. The company is closely working with Aramco on implementing the IKTVA programme to meet the 70 per cent rate target by 2021 – a localising requirement to qualify for future Aramco work.