Gwadar Port Faces Water Shortage

The brand-new port of Gwadar, Pakistan holds great promise for its Chinese investors: it is handling millions of tonnes of supplies for the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and in future years it will host a 2,000 acre free trade zone, an oil terminal and an LNG export plant.

News ID: 71331

Date: 03 January 2017 - 12:23

According to MANA, However, its developers will have to overcome one major hurdle in order to keep the port growing. Gwadar is in the middle of a desert, with average annual rainfall of 3.5 inches. With increased economic activity from the port's construction, Gwadar's population has increased by a factor of 20 over the past 15 years, and its water supply is under severe pressure.

The Pakistani government is attempting to address the problem through costly, energy-intensive desalination systems. A two million gallon per day desalination plant for Gwadar's new industrial zone was completed in 2015, after nearly a decade of delays.

Pakistani development officials blame the supply problem on a long-running insurgency in Balochistan: The completion of two new dams has been delayed for years due to a series of kidnappings, but now that the Pakistani government has assigned a special security force for CPEC projects, authorities say that these new reservoirs could be ready as early as 2018.