{"id":23554,"date":"2018-11-28T09:23:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T09:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23554"},"modified":"2018-11-28T09:23:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T09:23:06","slug":"iraq-seeks-power-revamp-to-head-off-sanctions-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23554","title":{"rendered":"Iraq seeks power revamp to head off sanctions, protests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nBAGHDAD: Iraq\u2019s broken electricity sector is planning a long-awaited overhaul to both meet US pressure to halt Iranian power imports and head off summertime protests over chronic cuts.
With a freshman at the helm, the electricity ministry is exploring options including revamping stations and lines to cut waste, importing power, and improving bill collection to boost revenues.
Baghdad hopes it will generate enough megawatts to feed demand by summer, when cuts can leave millions powerless for up to 20 hours per day.
But it also has an earlier deadline to meet.
When Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran in November over the latter\u2019s nuclear program, it granted Iraq a 45-day waiver to produce a roadmap to stop using Iranian electricity and gas.
Iraq pipes in up to 28 million cubic meters of Iranian gas daily to feed its stations, and also directly imports up to 1,300 megawatts of Iranian-produced electricity.
Now, Baghdad\u2019s power ministry has outlined a plan to wean off Iranian electricity within 18 months and resolve some decade-old problems, said spokesman Musab Al-Mudarris.
\u201cIn the coming two weeks, we will submit to the Americans a five-year plan including yearly assessments,\u201d he told AFP.
If the US approves, it may extend the waiver for \u201ca year or two.\u201d
\u201cBut there are no quick fixes,\u201d Mudarris insisted.
Iraq sits on 153 billion barrels of proven crude reserves, but it needs higher quality fuel and gas for power turbines.
Mudarris admitted that while Iraq could do without Iran\u2019s electricity, it needed Iranian gas until it could extract its own or capture flares from oil drilling.<\/p>\n

Using its own fuel plus Iranian gas, Iraq can produce a total of around 16,000 megawatts of electricity.
That is far below demand, which hovers around 24,000 MW but can jump to 30,000 in summer, when temperatures reach a sizzling 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit).
Much of the shortfall is technical: when Iraq transmits power, 30 to 50 percent gets lost to poor infrastructure, according to the Iraq Energy Institute (IEI).
Some of that is age, but pipelines and stations were also attacked by the Daesh group before Iraq beat it back last year.
Rehabilitation is a key element of the ministry\u2019s plan.
Mudarris pointed to recent memorandums of understanding with Siemens, worth $10 billion, and General Electric, at $15 billion, to fix infrastructure.
Together, they could add up to 24,000 MW within five years: \u201cThat would bring us to 40,000 MW,\u201d Mudarris said.
Electricity Minister Luay Al-Khateeb has also asked Siemens and GE for \u201cfast-track\u201d plans to boost power generation by summer.
Baghdad is finding ways to fund these efforts, including a $600 million finance deal between GE, the Trade Bank of Iraq, and Standard Chartered announced in late November.
Another ministerial initiative involves swapping Iranian power for imports from other neighbors, Mudarris said, including 300 MW each from Turkey, Jordan, and Kuwait, plus Saudi solar power.
In a possible omen, new Iraqi President Barham Saleh visited Amman, Kuwait, and Riyadh in his first regional trip since assuming power.
Finally, Baghdad wants to recover money lost by the ministry\u2019s poor collection service.
\u201cWe are losing about 60 percent of our revenues to people who don\u2019t pay. If we can cut those losses, we can stop relying on Iran,\u201d said Mudarris.<\/p>\n

Last year, Iraq began privatising by hiring collection services to ensure households paid power bills.
Samir Hussein, a 20-year employee of the ministry\u2019s distribution department, said privatised collection has already reduced outages in Baghdad.
\u201cThose who pay cut their usage by half, which allows me to redirect megawatts to other neighborhoods, preventing cuts there,\u201d he told AFP.
But obstacles remain, including overdue bills to Iran for previous imports.
A draft 2019 budget shows Iraq allocating some $800 million for \u201cIranian gas arrears\u201d and around $350 million for Iranian electricity backpay, according to an IEI analysis.
Another issue is Iraq\u2019s bloated electricity ministry, said energy expert Harry Estepanian.
Neighbouring Kuwait generates around the same amount of electricity as Iraq, but its ministry employs 12,000 compared with Iraq\u2019s roughly 140,000, he said.
The body is also accused of widespread corruption, which technocrat and first-time minister Khateeb pledged to investigate this week.
\u201cWhatever he is planning is doomed to fail if he does not reform,\u201d Estepanian told AFP.
And Iraq\u2019s five-year plan must account for skyrocketing consumption as cities are rebuilt post-Daesh.
\u201cRight now Mosul, Anbar, Salahaddin probably don\u2019t have high demand. Once reconstruction starts, demand will start to go up by around seven to 10 percent,\u201d Estepanian said.
\u201cThe gap between supply and demand is widening. It\u2019s not like it was in 2003 or 2013, and it won\u2019t be the same in 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAGHDAD: Iraq\u2019s broken electricity sector is planning a long-awaited overhaul to both meet US pressure to halt Iranian power imports and head off summertime protests over chronic cuts.With a freshman at the helm, the electricity ministry is exploring options including revamping stations and lines to cut waste, importing power, and improving bill collection to boost…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}