The only way to the electricity plants in Lebanon is the Iraq road, with which Lebanon signed in July 2021 an agreement to supply one million tons of fuel oil, and its first shipments arrived in September 2021. After the deadline for the agreement’s expiration approached next September, the media office of the Prime Minister confirmed Caretaker Najib Mikati, on Thursday, August 11, said that the Iraqi government, headed by Mustafa Al-Kazemi, agreed in its meeting to extend the work of the agreement, for a period of one year.
The extension of the agreement means that Electricité du Liban must search for a third party to replace Iraqi fuel oil with fuel suitable for power plants. This means that a tender is supposed to be conducted with companies that will apply to conduct the process, similar to the tender that the UAE company ENOC won. However, developments in the enforcement of the Public Procurement Law mean a transparent audit of the contracting process conducted by the General Directorate of Oil.
Thanks to Iraqi fuel, Lebanon benefits from regarding four hours of electricity. Citizens only get from it regarding an hour a day at best, while some areas do not see electricity for 24 hours. About half of the energy produced goes to technical waste due to the worn-out network, and part goes to benefit regions at the expense of others, due to the chaos witnessed by distribution stations that are subject to the whims of employees and their interests with politicians and owners of private generators.
Consequently, the flowing Iraqi fuel will not improve the near-total darkness, but rather extend its time until new developments emerge in the search for new sources of energy security, either directly from Jordan and Egypt, or indirectly through fuel supply agreements through Algerian or Turkish companies.
In light of what Minister of Energy Walid Fayyad confirmed regarding Iraqi fuel and the renewal of the contract with Iraq, former MP Muhammad Al-Hajjar revealed that the old contract signed with Iraq allows Lebanon to benefit from one hundred tons of fuel that does not conform to specifications through a tender conducted by the Ministry of Energy, which takes fuel from Iraq and replace it with fuel commensurate with the production equipment.
Hajjar stressed the need to form the authority that regulates the electricity sector in order to straighten things out, considering that Representative Gebran Bassil and his political team do not want this in order to continue to lay hands on the Ministry of Energy and the Electricité du Liban. He revealed that the World Bank did not agree to give Lebanon financial aid in favor of electricity unless the regulatory body is formed as a prerequisite.
