A Lebanese official announced on Friday that electricity production has completely stopped in the country, after the last two power plants were shut down as a result of running out of fuel.
And on Thursday, Electricité du Liban (government) announced that Deir Ammar (North) and Zahrani (South) plants had stopped working due to running out of fuel, and they are the only two that were in service recently.
The official media agency quoted Ahmed Abbas, director of the “Al-Zahrani” plant (affiliated with the Ministry of Energy), as saying that “the fuel insurance crisis continues, and the issue is related to the cash dollar.”
Abbas explained that “the current production of Electricité du Liban is zero hours.”
In subsequent statements to Al-Jadeed channel, Abbas said, “The problem is that the ship that comes has a cargo capacity that is less than the consumption capacity,” explaining that “each plant needs 60,000 tons of fuel per month.”
He expected the two suspended plants to return to work between next Tuesday and Wednesday, after securing the import of a shipment of fuel.
There are 7 power plants in Lebanon, all of which are out of service, after the Deir Ammar and Zahrani plants stopped working.
The volume of energy production in Lebanon ranged between 1,600 and 2,000 megawatts, but the scarcity of fuel in the past months has made production gradually decline to unprecedented low levels.
According to energy experts, Lebanon needs about 3,200 megawatts to provide electricity 24 hours a day, but it has been unable to achieve this for decades, and this is reflected in our rationing of the current in most regions, and pushes many Lebanese to subscribe to private power generators.
The power outage is one of the aspects of the severe economic crisis that has afflicted Lebanon since late 2019, as it caused the deterioration of the value of its currency against the dollar, and the lack of foreign exchange allocated for import, which was reflected in a shortage of fuel, medicines and other basic commodities.