Baghdad The International Energy Agency said that the electricity sector in Iraq must include in its plans long-term reforms and solutions in order to reduce the crisis of continuous power generation outages.

Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the International Energy Agency, Ali Al-Saffar, added in an interview with The National news website, “The Iraqi electricity problem requires the development of a short, medium and long-term plan. Nevertheless, successive governments have tended to the option of short-term reforms. We wanted to reach a system of continuous and stable generation of electric power, but this is not achieved with short-term plans only. The three stages are required and will be logical in solving the crisis one after the other.

He continued, “What we are witnessing today is a situation in which the generating station is virtually collapsed, and this becomes clear when the generation rates fluctuate up and down and in the end the system stops, and electrical outages can occur when the electricity network operates at its maximum capacity, or because of holidays in the transmission and distribution network. High temperatures can also play a role in these stops.

Al-Saffar said, “the temperatures are very high, and this can cause problems. On the other hand, Iraq’s imports of gas and electric power have shrunk a lot.” After years of war and economic decline, Iraq needs investments in all its industrial sectors, but power generation is a matter particularly sensitive. As power plants in the aging countries generate few hours of electricity per day, these chronic power cuts were a major cause of anti-government protests that began in October 2019.

The international energy official went on to say, “regardless of what Iraq has invested over the past ten years, there is a growing gap between the rate of supply and the volume of demand, and when there is a gap between the amount of electricity supply and the volume of demand for it, this demand cannot be met, and this is what causes interruptions in power generation.”

The official in the Energy Agency says that Iraq has the potential to confront this problem. He added that Iraq is among the most countries in the world that burn associated natural gas. He pointed out that he burns sufficient quantities of gas to meet his energy needs.

Al-Saffar said, “there is a targeting campaign by armed groups to strike the transmission and distribution networks and power stations. It seems that there are systematic attempts to strike the electricity system in this heat, which aims to anger the people.” Last Thursday, a 400 kV transmission line between Kirkuk and Qayyarah was sabotaged , and sabotaging another line on the same day in Salah al-Din with a capacity of 132 kv.

Al-Saffar added that if the new government that will emerge from the October elections puts the electricity problem as a priority in its government program, then the electricity problems can be solved, noting that the government of Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has pledged to bring the private sector and global investors to the country. Last week, the Emirati company, Masdar, stated that it would develop new solar energy projects in Iraq, and signed an agreement with the Iraqi National Investment Authority to develop photovoltaic projects with a minimum production capacity of 2 gigawatts.

Source: National Iraqi News Agency