AP has a really good look at the desalination plants in the Middle East: how critical they are to the countries and how vulnerable they are, too. Something I never thought about until today.
In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia.
“Everyone thinks of Saudi Arabia and their neighbors as petrostates. But I call them saltwater kingdoms. They’re human-made fossil-fueled water superpowers,” said Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah.
Gulf governments and U.S. officials have long recognized the risks these systems pose for regional stability: if major desalination plants were knocked offline, some cities could lose most of their drinking water within days.
