Lebanon’s national electricity grid has been completely collapsed this Saturday after the cessation of operations of the two most important plants in the country, Al Zahrani and Deir Amar, due to lack of fuel, which has caused a widespread blackout throughout the country.
The separation of both plants from the grid has reduced national energy production to less than 200 megawatts, which has ended up causing the entire system to crash.
Lebanon’s state electricity company, Électricité du Liban (EdL), immediately began to “carry out the relevant operations” to rebuild “the national grid manually,” according to a statement picked up by Lebanese television LBCI .
A new shipment of fuel is expected to arrive tonight that would be destined directly to the thermal plants of Zouk and Jiyé to raise total production to 500 megawatts, according to the full EdL statement, collected by the state news agency. Lebanese NNA .
In the note, the company claims that the decrease in production “was directly reflected on the stability of the network and led to its total decline, without the possibility of rebuilding it again at the present time.”
“Faced with this situation beyond the control of EdL, the company will endeavor to keep all citizens aware of the electricity supply through subsequent statements,” the statement concludes.
Lebanese state television recalls that the operation is especially complicated, considering that the national control center was destroyed by the explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020.
Deep crisis
In the midst of one of the worst economic crises in its modern history, the Lebanese people have been affected by worsening fuel shortages in recent months and the majority of the population depends on private generators for energy.
In fact, and as LBCI also reported on Friday, the distribution of domestic gas cylinders has stopped since then, while distributors accuse the Banque du Liban of having taken them by surprise by eliminating gas subsidies, which caused, according to them , losses for the sector, according to union sources.
In response to the blackout, several groups of protesters have blocked some roads in the north of the country this Saturday, in areas such as Bab el Tebbené or the Abu Ali roundabout, in Tripoli, as well as in Al Nur square. Some have closed public roads with their vehicles or tires, causing huge traffic jams, report the ‘L’Orient le Jour’ correspondents.
Countries such as Iran have pledged to continue supplying Lebanon with fuel to alleviate the effects of the crisis, but the country suffered a practically irreparable blow on October 1 when the Turkish company Karpowership announced the end of its electricity supply operations to Lebanon upon completion. your contract with EdL.
In May, the company had suspended the supply of its floating power plants for more than a month, citing failure to resolve a months-long payment dispute and legal threats to seize its ships over corruption allegations.
After the announcement of the cessation of operations, EdL advanced that the country could be without electricity within a month, while the population had been subsisting for weeks with only two hours of general electricity, so it had to be forced to resort to to the use of private generators.
“The network has already experienced total blackouts across the country seven times and, if this continues, there is a high risk of reaching a total and complete blackout by the end of the month,” EDL explained in a statement, warning that Lebanon It has already ‘exhausted all possible options’ and was only able to supply power to those production groups based on ‘their remaining fuel stocks’.
