Iraq’s electricity minister says the country will soon buy 500 megawatts of electricity from Turkey to prevent blackouts. Adel Karim further said that negotiations with Qatar for the import of gas are continuing so that this imported gas can be used for power plants. According to him, the purchase of electricity from Turkey will start soon, but the delivery of Qatari gas will probably take a year to 15 months. Turkey has started selling limited electricity to Iraq since the beginning of last year.
Adel Karim also said about the agreement to buy electricity from Saudi Arabia that in the first phase, 500 megawatts of Saudi electricity will be delivered to Iraq and in the future this figure will reach one thousand megawatts.
Regarding another plan to cut Iraq’s electricity dependence on Iran, the Iraqi Minister of Electricity said that the Jordanian power transmission line to Iraq will be completed within a year and the received electricity will be allocated to the western regions of Iraq.
He added that currently only 8 million cubic meters of Iranian gas are delivered daily to Iraq, which is insufficient to generate electricity.
According to the agreement, Iran must deliver 50 million cubic meters of gas per day to Iraq; But Iran itself is facing a severe gas deficit. Due to the sanctions Iran is not allowed to receive money for electricity and gas exports to Iraq either. Iran also faced severe electricity shortages in the summer. The Iraqi Minister of Electricity says that this summer Iran did not deliver even “one megawatt of electricity” to Iraq.
According to him, the price of gas exports to Iraq is less than $4 billion annually.
