Representative energy: the electrical connection with the Gulf and Turkey is moving slowly
Baghdad: The Committee on Oil, Energy and Natural Resources in the House of Representatives slowly approved measures for electrical connection with the Gulf and Europe, while it expected an improvement in energy supply this summer.
A member of the committee, Sadiq Al-Sulaiti, told Al-Sabah: that Iraq suffers from a power shortage of more than 12,000 megawatts, stressing that Iraq will not be able to fill this shortage with local production during the next five years, due to the lack of the necessary allocations that enable the establishment of electrical stations.
Al-Sulaiti stressed the importance of the Gulf and Turkey electrical interconnection so that Iraq would be a hub for communication between the Gulf states and Europe, expressing his regret that these two projects are proceeding in slow steps, and the government was supposed to accelerate the connection of these two systems because of their benefit to Iraq.
He added that the difference in peak times between Iraq and the northern regions represented by Turkey and Europe, we can become a corridor for the export of energy from hot regions in summer towards Turkey with a moderate atmosphere and transfer it to other countries, indicating that Iraq consumes 13 thousand megawatts from the investment stations in the winter season. That available is about 19 thousand megawatts, which compels him to extinguish about 5 thousand megawatts and out of work in this season.
Al-Sulaiti added that the committee stressed the need to legislate the oil and gas law during the next few phase, but it needs to complete the vote on the law of the National Oil Company, indicating that the oil law has been completed and has reached the stage of voting, but that work will not be done after voting until after the company’s law is approved. Because there are paragraphs linked with each other in the two laws.
A member of the Energy Committee expected that the supply of electricity in the current summer will be better than last year, given the approval of the budget, which enables the Ministry of Electricity to complete the maintenance and preparation of the electrical network during the coming period, unlike what happened during 2020 when the maintenance work was not carried out as required due to the lack of approval of the budget.