Saudi Arabia

National Water Context

Saudi Arabia had an estimated 35.3 million residents in mid-2024, about 84% of them in urban areas, and very little renewable water. Its internal renewable freshwater resources are put at 2.4 billion m³ a year, or about 75 m³ per person. In 2023 withdrawals were 974% of available renewable freshwater, in the critical class of the UN water stress indicator. The country has therefore relied on two sources that rainfall does not replenish: fossil groundwater, drawn mainly by farms, and desalinated seawater, which supplies most of the cities’ water. Under Vision 2030, national policy is shifting supply away from fossil groundwater and towards desalination and treated wastewater.

Resources & Demand

Agriculture is by far the largest user. Farms consumed 12.3 billion m³ in 2023, while extraction of non-renewable groundwater across all uses was 10.8 billion m³, still the largest source in the national water balance. Renewable groundwater made up only 21% of the groundwater extracted. Reducing fodder cultivation has been the main lever: the area under fodder fell from about 501,000 hectares in 2015 to 198,000 in 2025, and the ministry reports that the associated water use fell from 16.6 to 6.5 billion m³. Depletion has a regional dimension. Around Tabuk in the north, abstraction from the Saq aquifer, which is shared with Jordan, far exceeded its recharge in the 2000s.

Infrastructure & Governance

The sector was reorganised in 2024. The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture sets policy, leads the National Water Strategy 2030 and administers the 2020 Water Law and the 2025 Saudi Code for Water Sources and Their Uses. The Saudi Water Authority, formed in May 2024 from the Saline Water Conversion Corporation, regulates and licenses the sector and holds the state’s desalination assets. The National Water Company, owned by the Public Investment Fund, runs urban water and wastewater services through six regional clusters, parts of which private operators already manage. Sharakat, the Saudi Water Partnership Company, procures privately financed plants and pipelines. In 2024 sanitation coverage was 93.7% in urban areas but 59.3% in rural areas.

Investment & Resilience

Private finance now carries much of the expansion. In 2026 Sharakat’s portfolio stood at SR56 billion across 48 water and wastewater projects, 15 of them in service, with contracted desalination capacity above 10 million m³ a day. Recent financial closes include a second 587 km pipeline from Jubail to Buraydah (about SR8.5 billion, October 2025) and the Ras Mohaisen desalination plant (January 2026). In December 2024 the minister said 40 further projects worth SAR 97 billion would be offered to private investors through 2030. The ministry reports that strategic storage capacity has grown by more than 125%, an important buffer for a system that depends on coastal plants and long pipelines.

Key Challenges

1. Reducing farm demand on fossil groundwater, which remained the largest source in the national water balance in 2023 and is not replenished.
2. Lowering water losses: non-revenue water was 35% in the National Water Company’s service areas in February 2026, against the company’s 27% target.
3. Narrowing the gap between desalination costs and tariff revenue, which a KAPSARC estimate puts at about 20% of desalination’s levelised cost in 2025.
4. Extending wastewater collection and reuse, with rural sanitation well behind urban areas and full network coverage still a target.

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