Iraqis are suffering from soaring summer temperatures amid electricity shortages caused by reduced supplies of Iranian gas.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani held an emergency meeting on 10 July to find alternatives to Iranian gas, including from Qatar and Turkmenistan, Shafaq news agency reported. The meeting comes amid intermittent cuts in Iranian gas supplies and soaring summer temperatures.
Iraq’s electricity production is heavily reliant on Iranian gas imports, which account for roughly 40 percent of its power supply, especially during the summer months when temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius (122°F) and power consumption peaks.
However, Iraq has seen frequent disruptions in Iranian gas imports in recent months, for reasons that are disputed.
Due to US sanctions, which block transactions between Iraqi and Iranian banks, the Iraqi government must receive a sanctions waiver in order to pay Iran for natural gas imports. This has led to delays in payments, causing Iran to cut off gas supplies in the past.
In May, Iranian gas imports were reduced by 20 million cubic meters, as Baghdad had not yet paid $2.76 billion in past bills. This “led to a decrease in electricity production and has repercussions on daily life,” according to Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, who spoke with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian about the issue by phone call.
However, Amir-Abdollahian stated that the reduction in gas exports to Iraq was a technical matter, and Tehran had not decided on any cuts.
In June, Iraqi officials received US permission to pay about $2.76 billion to Iran after receiving clearance from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
But last week, Iraq’s electricity ministry announced that the country had lost nearly five thousand megawatts of power due to Iran limiting the amount of gas exports to its neighboring country.
Gas imports to the southern region of the country have completely stopped, and the supply of the natural resource to Baghdad and central Iraq decreased from 45 million cubic meters to 20 million cubic meters, causing several power plants to halt operations.
In response to Sudani’s meeting yesterday, the director of the distribution network at the National Iranian Gas Company, Mohammad Reza Goulaei, stated today that the decline in gas exports to Iraq was again due to a technical malfunction.
“There is a malfunction in the gas network in the west of the country, which has caused a decrease in exports to Iraq by 5-10 million cubic meters per day in the past few days,” the Iranian semi-official Fars news agency quoted Julai as saying.
He added, “Gas exports to Iraq continue and will continue, but due to the intense heat in the southern and southwestern regions of the country, the efficiency of equipment in the production and transportation sectors was disrupted, which negatively affected the transfer of gas to the gas network in the west of the country.”
Though Iraq is a major oil producing country, with its own supply of natural gas, it does not have the infrastructure to produce the gas needed for its domestic use. Large amounts of natural gas are burned as a waste byproduct of Iraqi oil production, in a process known as flaring, causing pollution and serious health consequences, including high rates of cancer, for Iraqis living near oil fields.
Last month, the Iraqi government signed a deal with French energy giant TotalEnergies for a project to develop Iraqi natural gas and reduce flaring.
“The Total agreement is one of the most important gas investment agreements and the development of oil fields, which will provide half of our gas needs,” Prime Minister Sudani stated.
