A fire at the al-Bakr power plant in Basra on Saturday noon led to the disconnection between the electricity grid lines of the southern and central Iraqi provinces, leading to a complete shutdown of electricity in the region.
“Electricity supply to all hospitals, medical centers, water, and sewage stations have been restored,” the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity announced on Saturday night on Facebook, adding that electricity will be gradually restored after restarting generating units to reconnect the separated grid lines in an earlier statement.
The electricity shutdown comes at a time of scorching temperatures in the southern provinces of Iraq near 50 degrees Celsius, and thousands of Shiite Muslims visit the region to commemorate Ashura, the anniversary of the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet.
Iraq already suffers from chronic electricity shortages, especially felt during the summer months. The high temperatures subsequently lead citizens to consume very high amounts of power. In previous years, mass protests have erupted in the south during the summer as a result of electricity and water shortages.
Earlier this month, the electricity ministry announced that the country lost nearly 5,000 megawatts of power due to Iran completely stopping the supply of gas to the southern regions of the country.
Iraq’s electricity ministry said that despite the “tangible improvement” the country’s power grid had made in providing electricity recently, the decrease in imported gas had led to the loss of nearly five thousand megawatts of production capacity.
For years, Iraq’s electrical grid has been dependent on gas imports from Iran to run its power generation plants. Earlier this month, Iranian state media said that Iran had exported 9.4 billion cubic meters of gas to Iraq in 2022, citing a report from the UK-based Energy Institute.
In order to tackle dependency on Tehran and achieve self-sufficiency in gas and end imports, the Iraqi oil ministry signed a $27 billion dollar deal with French giant TotalEnergies to develop Iraq’s oil, gas, and renewable energies sectors.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani said in April that gas projects and the TotalEnergies deal will make Baghdad self-sufficient and an exporter of gas in the next five years.
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