Groping For Water in Saudi Arabia

Saudia Arabia has launched a major effort to search for water, according to Der Spiegel.

To do so, it has hired a German geologist German development agency GTZ, which is drilling holes up to 2,000 meters deep to conduct pumping tests and apply complex measuring techniques and computer models. The tests are designed determine how much fossil groundwater remains stored between layers of rock beneath the Arabian Peninsula. GTZ is assisted by the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, which uses supercomputers to simulate groundwater currents from the last ice age until today.

The Saudi effort is prompted by the realization that its current pattern of water consumption is unsustainable and that water supply would run out in 3o years at current consumption rates. With its research, GTZ expects Saudi Arabia to become a test case for arid regions, which make up about 40 percent of the world's land area.

Fossil groundwater is the only natural water source in a region without rivers and lakes, where every raindrop is an event. After the last ice age, when the climate on the Arabian Peninsula was similar, in terms of temperature and precipitation, to that of savanna regions today, the water seeped away into the ground, eventually accumulating in hollow spaces between layers of sedimentary rock.

Most of this water is in eastern Saudi Arabia, home to most of the country's oil and natural gas reserves. As a result, geologists searching for oil sometimes find water and vice-versa. And like oil, the precious drops of water from the last ice age are finite. Too much of that water is now being pumped out of ever-deeper wells, causing the water table to drop. This in turn allows salt water to seep into the groundwater along the coasts.

To tackle its water scarcity problem, Saudi Arabia has already halted its attempts to turn its deserts into green pastures and achieve food security by promoting domestic agriculture. To do so, the agriculture ministry was stripped of its discretionary authority in all things water. In 2007, the government canceled all subsidies for wheat farming and said the country's wheat production would be wound down by 2016. Instead Saudi Arabia is moving to buy agricultrual land in Africa and Asia and to import wheat and other agricultural products. It also is encouraging small farmers in Saudi Arabia return to traditional agriculture and plant drought-resistant date palms, or grow profitable vegetable crops in greenhouses.

"Our biggest challenge is the conflict between agriculture and other water users," Deputy Water Minister Mohammed Al-Saud told Der Spiegel. "Anyone who wants to develop agriculture does so at the expense of water. And you can't conserve water without having a negative impact on agriculture."

Eventually, the minister hopes to make Saudi Arabia a model for other countries by monitoring water consumption on farms in real time, which would allow the government to develop a comprehensive water strategy. GTZ is preparing the first step in that direction by developing a computer model that would determine for any location in the country the nearest aquifer and calculate its size where it would make most sense to drill a well.