GS Inima secures financing to build Oman PV plant

18 June 2025

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Spanish water treatment company GS Inima has announced that it has secured financing to build a 6.3-megawatt peak (MWp) solar photovoltaic (PV) plant at the Barka 5 independent water project (IWP) in Oman.

The financing will be provided by Cofides, a Spanish public-private entity “that promotes the internationalisation and sustainability of companies by providing financing for investment projects”, GS Inima said in a statement.

GS Inima was selected as the owner-operator of the Barka 5 IWP in November 2020. The plant, which uses reverse osmosis technology to treat 100,000 cubic metres of water a day, was the company’s first project in the Middle East. 

The Barka 5 IWP, which provides treated water to Oman’s Nama Power & Water Procurement Company (Nama PWP) to serve more than 800,000 people in the Muscat, Dakhiliyah and Batinah regions, reached commercial operations in June last year.

The planned solar PV facility, designed for self-consumption, will cover approximately 11% of Barka 5’s energy consumption until 2044. It will be built on a 40,000-square-metre area and will be designed, executed, operated and maintained by GS Inima.

Integrating clean energy into infrastructures such as Barka 5 enables the optimisation of resource use, the reduction of the carbon footprint and progress towards a more environmentally friendly energy model,” GS Inima said in its statement.

Separately, GS Inima also recently announced achieving 1 million man-hours without lost time incidents at the under-construction Ghubrah 3 IWP project, which it is developing in a consortium with local contractor Sogex Oman and Saudi Arabia’s Aljomaih Energy & Water Company.

GS Inima is the leader of the consortium with a 52% stake in the Ghubrah 3 IWP project, while Aljomaih and Sogex Oman each hold a 24% interest.

The consortium reached financial close on the project in January this year. A group of international and local banks, including Export-Import Bank of South Korea (Kexim), UK-headquartered Standard Chartered and the local Bank Dhofar, agreed to provide $370m of project finance investment.

Nama PWP, the project’s offtaker, officially signed a contract to develop and operate the 300,000 cubic-metres-a-day desalination plant with the GS Inima-led consortium in May 2023, which was at least two years after the 20-year water-purchase agreement for the project was signed in 2021.

GS Inima is designing and building the Ghubrah 3 IWP facility in its capacity as the project’s engineering, procurement and construction contractor. The plant is expected to start commercial operations in the first quarter of 2027.

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Indrajit Sen
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