Moroccan fertilizer giant OCP has renewed its determination to continue boosting Morocco’s sustainable development through the signing of a new memorandum of understanding as well as a concession contract with the country’s government in a bid to help improve its water management efforts.
Morocco’s government and the OCP group signed on Wednesday the agreements, under which the two will cooperate to improve drinking water by desalinating seawater for the Safi and El Jadida regions.
The agreements form part of OCP’s sustainability-driven programs that encourage optimized water management through the use of non-conventional water resources, namely purified urban wastewater and desalinated seawater.
With the presence of Head of Government Aziz Akhannouch, OCP and the Ministries of Water and Energy Transition, as well as the Secretary General of the Ministry of Interior, signed the Memorandum of Understanding as part of the implementation and acceleration of the National Program for Drinking Water Supply and Irrigation 2020-2027 (PNAEPI 20-27).
Morocco has been setting a series of measures to tackle the situation of drought and lack of rainfalls throughout the country, which has affected both drinking water assets as well as the agriculture sector.
According to a government press release on the signings, the OCP-government initiative is setting its sights on helping to save the water source of the hydraulic basin of Oum-Er-Rbia to avoid the risk of disrupting drinking water supplies for the population of the region.
In February of last year, the government decided to set up a program including the development of a strategic partnership with OCP for the long-term and sustainable mobilization of water resources through the desalination of seawater.
Under the implemented measures, a shared seawater desalination project will kick off as part of an emergency plan to produce drinking water for Safi and El Jadida, as well as to meet the industrial needs of the phosphates group.
As part of OCP’s “water neutrality” strategy, it seeks to promote the use of green energies. It also seeks to use exclusively non-conventional water for its industrial operations.
Under the emergency plan, Morocco will make it possible to produce and deliver 85 million cubic meters (m3) per year from 2023 to 2025, and 110 million m3 per year from 2026.
The emergency plan will also help Morocco produce 10 million m3 for Safi and 30 million m3 for El Jadida in 2023.
For the years 2024 and 2025, the targeted volume is 15 million m3 per year for Safi and 32 million m3 per year for El Jadida. From 2026, a volume of 30 million m3 per year will be allocated for Safi, and 45 million m3 for El Jadida.
Concerning the production of water for industrial use, the emergency plan aims to ensure the mobilization of 35 million m3 of treated desalinated water per year in the long term.
The utilities will benefit from 75 million m3 of desalinated water per year for the needs of public services, with 35 million m3 per year allocated to the industrial use of OCP, starting in 2026.
The process of seawater desalination will take place in four desalination units, two of which are located at the Jorf Lasfar industrial site, with two others located in Safi.
As for the concession contract between OCP Green Water and the government, the agreement aims to ensure the right to desalinate seawater to supply drinking water at competitive costs to the managers of public drinking water distribution services.
These include the Autonomous Water and Electricity Distribution Board of El Jadida and the autonomous inter-municipal water and electricity distribution company of the province of Safi.
The concession contract also ensures the delivery of water for industrial use to the OCP Group.
Morocco’s government has been pledging several measures to tackle the recent drought situation, including the construction of more dams.
The North African country has 136 small dams, as well as 152 large dams with a collective storage capacity of over 19 billion m3, in addition to 16 others under construction with a storage capacity of nearly 5 billion m3.
The OCP had been strengthening its programs in efforts to help improve the country’s water management.
In March 2022, the group reaffirmed its commitment in accelerating its “Water Program” to cope with the water stress.
As part of the acceleration, OCP emphasized the importance of the use of desalination units to meet the water needs of the fertilizer production sites in the cities of Safi and Jorf Lasfar, near El Jadida.
The group also announced that it will stop using natural freshwater resources in its fertilizer production as of this year.
