Zahrani power plant. (Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — Electricité du Liban warned on Saturday that it may have to further ration, or even completely halt, its already severely restricted supply of power to the country if it fails to secure the foreign currency necessary to finance its operations.
What we know:
• EDL’s warning states that the increased rationing will be necessitated by the economic crisis in the country and the fact that Banque du Liban is no longer opening lines of credit to enable it to finance fuel imports. The state power provider goes on to caution that the situation if left unaddressed could lead to “the total interruption of power production.”
• It also notes that EDL needs foreign currency to maintain its increasingly obsolete equipment and to pay for the production of electricity by two power stations rented from a Turkish company and moored for years at Zouk and Jiyyeh.
• EDL’s statement also points out that a recent agreement between Lebanon and Iraq that would provide Lebanon with a million tons of fuel oil, would only provide “a third of the utility’s annual needs.”
• Since the fall of 2019, Lebanon has been in the throes of a crisis described by the World Bank as likely one of the worst in the world since 1850. Short of foreign currency, the country is struggling to import enough fuel to run its power stations. Since mid-2020, EDL has reduced electricity production, causing power rationing of up to 23 hours per day. In normal times, private generators take over when the state power supply is rationed, but due to fuel shortages, the owners of these generators have been forced to turn them off for several hours during the day and at night, leaving residents and businesses without any power for hours at a time.
What we know:
• EDL’s warning states that the increased rationing will be necessitated by the economic crisis in the...