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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq does not have enough capacity to generate a sufficient amount of electricity in the summer, the spokesperson to the country’s electricity ministry told Rudaw on Sunday, adding that an official delegation will visit Iran soon to discuss energy imports from Tehran.
“The topic of electricity imported from Iran is divided into two parts, one is that there is an amount of electricity imported that is not more than 1100 megawatts from Iranian lines,” Ahmed Mousa told Rudaw’s Mohammed Sheikh Fatih, adding that this amount is prone to change.
“Last summer, for five months, all of it stopped. Not a single megawatt was imported because Iran needed electricity itself,” he added.
The second way Iraq benefits from Iran generating electricity is through the import of gas.
According to Mousa, contracts between Baghdad and Tehran indicate that Iraq will import 50 million cubic meters of gas in the winter and 70 million in the summer, however this has also been decreased on multiple occasions to a point that it was at one point down to eight million.
“Following several meetings, we have been able to raise the amount from eight million to 20 million, and then to 25 million, and now we are discussing raising it to 30 million cubic meters,” Mousa said, noting that even that amount would not be enough to provide 24 hours of energy.
Iraq suffers from chronic electricity shortages, especially felt when summer temperatures reach over 50 degrees Celsius. The shortages are caused by multiple factors, including poor basic services, the government’s inability to deliver these services, rampant corruption, and terror attacks on the power grid.
The Iraqi ministry has been working on increasing electricity supplies for quite some time.
Mousa earlier this month told Iraqi state media that they have finished all the technical steps required to import electricity from Turkey.
“For the line to start working, we need approval from the European Union given that Turkey's electricity is connected to the European Union,” Mousa said, adding that initial approval has been obtained.
According to Mousa’s statement to Iraqi state media, the amount of electricity that will be imported from Turkey to provinces in the north of the country will be 500 megawatts in the summer.
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