Deir Ammar power plant back online, Zahrani to return Tuesday

BEIRUT — After being shut down for several days due to a lack of fuel, the Deir Ammar (North Lebanon) and Zahrani (South Lebanon) power plants should both be functioning starting Tuesday afternoon.

Here’s what we know:

    • The Deir Ammar plant was good to go yesterday afternoon, after part of the 40,900 tons of fuel that arrived in Lebanon recently were unloaded there. According to indications from state power provider Electricité du Liban, this volume will provide nearly 450 megawatts of capacity, barely amounting to 2 to 3 hours of electricity per day, depending on the region.

    • On Friday, the director of the Zahrani power plant, Ahmad Abbas, indicated that "the cargo of tankers carrying fuel oil does not meet the needs of the Deir Ammar and Zahrani power stations, each requiring 60,000 tons of fuel oil per month." These are amounts that Lebanon has been unable to provide for almost two years now.

    • For the last six months, EDL has been almost exclusively relying on the fuel supplied under an agreement made between Lebanon and Iraq last August.