Lack of water poses major challenge to agriculture, mining industries in the kingdom .Long before it understood the value of oil, the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia knew the worth of water.But the leading oil exporter's water challenges are growing as energy-intensive desalination erodes oil revenues while peak water looms more ominously than peak oil, the theory that supplies are at or near their limit, with nowhere to go but down. Water use in the desert kingdom is already almost double the per capita global average and increasing at an ever faster rate with the rapid expansion of Saudi Arabia's population and industrial development. The alternative to desalination, the energy-intensive process of converting salt water to fresh water, robs Saudi Arabia of its other precious resource, oil, by eating up both fuel and fuel revenues. ( Reuters)
No comments:
Post a Comment